[...] At least there's no apparent need to cut off any snide, negative comments, as I had to do with Andy Langer at the conclusion of the following clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxfl-QvcBCI - NotDan [...]
Since a recent new post in the"Dan Interviewed on BBC Radio 2" thread may be leading people to run across my earlier post which I've truncated above, I realized that said people may be wondering why the included link now leads to naught save a notice that the clip was removed due to a "terms of use violation".
Well, yesterday, on Thursday, January 3rd, it seems that NBC Universal ordered the video-sharing site Youtube to remove ONE clip from my "CheeZeeTeeVee Channel" thereupon (the clip showed Bonzo Dog Band/Rutles co-founder Neil Innes performing a tune on NBC's late-night program "SNL" in the late 1970s).
The clip had been included among the large "library" of cool & strange videos posted at CZTV for a good six months without incident, but apparently, the season of SNL from whence the clip was culled is being issued on DVD, and so the network's parent company wished to have it excised from the CZTV site. This was, of course, a reasonable action, and in fact, I had posted a comment mere days before expressing my own hopes that the rare and delightful performance by Innes was indeed, as rumor had it at the time, going to get the deluxe commercial release that it deserved.
However, before I even spotted an email from Youtube in my inbox regarding their receipt of a communication from NBC, I discovered that Youtube had completely and irreversibly deleted every single file from CZTV --including numerous rare and obscure Daniel Johnston performances and conceptual videos -- and had permanently canceled my Youtube account altogether.
Some of the Johnston-centric works were clips that I had shot and/or edited myself, such as the stark and shadowy slo-mo visuals accompanying the previously unheard track "Grievance/Greensleeves"(from a 1982 prototype of the "More Songs of Pain" album that Dan made for me 20 years ago; in other cases like the extremely popular B&W "Funeral Home" video directed by Tim Hamblin in 1986, the videos were posted with the full awareness and permission of the works' creators. Needless to add, I never made a red cent from the hours of labor I put into assembling and maintaining the CZTV video library.
Nevertheless, all the links which previously led curious web-crawlers to the works named above, and/or to any material from my own personal creative work and rare video archives collected at CZTV, now dead-end at patently false messages claiming that the videos have all been deleted in the name of such "terms of use violations".
Daniel and I recently shot some video footage at his home in Waller, Texas, which I have not yet posted due to problems with my editing software (in fact, nothing new had been added to the site in several months). It is with great sadness and no little disgust that I must now inform you, Daniel's fans and friends, that access to not only these previously cleared audiovisual gems at CheeZeeTeeVee, but also the new material that Dan and I wished to share with you, will no longer be available for public viewing [not through Youtube, at any rate!]
That's it -- I just wanted to let you all know that this matter has been taken out of my hands so you all know and understand the situation. I hope that over the past year and a half, you enjoyed the free and uncensored access to the clips of "Rejected" and "I'm a Believer" [live w/Rhythm Rats 1997], "Live & Let Die" [ACTV in-house studio performance 2001], and even silliness like my own "Not Daniel Johnston" rendition of "Milking the Dog" (in answer to "Walking the Cow", naturally!)
It was fun while it lasted... but it would seem that, due to the blind greed and ever-tightening grasp of worldwide corporate a$$holism, as represented by supposedly
freedom-, fun-, and art-based global internet outlets as Youtube (aka SCREWTUBE)...
Some things WON'T last a long time.
- NotDan
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