When word came out of the closing of the Winterland, several of us happened to be hard-core Deadheads, working entry-level jobs at KOTI-TV, a small television station in Klamath Falls, Ore., a relatively easy seven-hour drive from San Francisco. Erich Lyttle, who was the most experienced creative producer at the station, headed up the idea to put together a video to a) entertain ourselves and b) entertain the thought that the band would think it was cool and send us tickets. It was LONG sold out at this point. A creative grovel, if you will.
So, Erich went to work and we followed along with any help on camera, graphics, etc. This was still in the early stages of TV production technology. Animation was a fairly primitive art in 1978. But Erich was up to the task and pulled out every psychedelic trick in the bag that we could, using video feedback, basically pointing a video camera at a monitor that is displaying the video camera’s output. Eric, Richard and I threw in some comedic intro slapstick about who we were, then attempted to dazzle them in a psychedelic treatment of their recent music appearance on Saturday Night Live.
There by the grace of God goes another faithful fan creation, never to be seen or heard from again.
I am not sure how long it was, a week, two, three and Erich heard a page to answer the phone at the KOTI office. “This is the BGP office calling and we just wanted to let you know that we got your tape, that Bill Graham and everyone here loved it, and Bill wanted to let you know that we are sending you 10 free passes to the closing of Winterland.” We were screaming like monkeys until the cigar-chewing general manager told us to shut up.
I am still amazed that all of us first timers in television, in a tiny broadcast market were at a station chock full of Deadheads. Yeah, we had a job to do, and, yeah, we made every mistake in the book, but we also sparked hard on the creative, or as creative as we could be with very limited technology of the times. But it was people like Erich and Richard who ignited that small market form of what the Dead called “misfit power” in the broadcast realm.
It was lightning striking for us Deadhead grunts working our first jobs in TV and remains not only an indelible memory of our 45-plus shared years of Dead life, but a sweet reminder of why most of us still work in this business of video/film and of our early days together, creating our own brand of misfit power in a tiny TV station.
~ Terry Woodburn