29 june 2004 the e-paper playlouder published a very long interview with john 'drumbo' french, titled french redressing. the main content dealt with the magic band reunion going on, but suddenly:

interviewer grahame bent: Word is there's also a magic band dvd on the way...

It's basically the Shepherd's Bush concert from April last year and it's basically the concert with the dead spaces in between edited out. I think it's a really good show. It was done on a sixteen track Apple Macintosh and I think they used four cameras. It wasn't really planned as a concert dvd. The producer was Elaine Shepherd - she's a BBC producer and she produced The artist formerly known as Captain Beefheart (and despite her surname has no connection to the venue - teejo) - and the concert footage was supposed to be for a documentary but she shot the whole concert and at the end of it all she was looking at the footage and said: 'You know, I think we could actually put together a concert dvd out of this' and that's how it came about. The sound is really good, it's going to be in 5.1 sound except everything crashed on the last two songs and we only have a stereo stage mix of them so we're calling them 'bonus tracks'.

Disc 2 is the documentary called Like Bluegrass, Only Weirder and I think it flows really well. It shows us at the Back To The Front sessions in Palmdale and rehearsing for the first time when we got back together to play and each of us is talking about how good it feels to be playing the music again. There's footage of Matt Groening coming to hear the rehearsal and there's an interview with him, then there's some vintage 8mm footage I shot of Don van Vliet in the early 70's, then it shows us winding up in London and driving down to Camber Sands [for the live debut at All Tomorrow's Parties - t.t.], then there's some rehearsal footage and you see us being interviewed by the press.

Any idea when the dvd will be seeing the light of day?

We have a very influential person who has agreed to do the voice over and the narration for us so we're waiting until that has been done. That's going to take another month or so then it should be out really soon after that. I'm really excited about having the person who's going to be doing this on board but I don't want to give anything away (to protect john peel ? - teejo). The double dvd will be available through the internet. Basically I think we'll start doing it by mail order and take it from there.

the veedee - a 'long player' instead of two separate ones - was manufactured by subdiva, which firm apologized: Due to delays beyond our control, the new Magic Band DVD release has been set back by a few more weeks. The final manufacturers delivery date has now been given as 3 january 2005, this means that the Magic Band DVD will definitely be available for shipping from this date. To coincide with the shipping date, a secure online purchasing system will be available for efficient payment and delivery processing,

once had an interesting offer:

The first 100 advance orders received through this site will be signed by the band....,

mentioned: Technical details: PAL format - regions 2 and 4 - stereo - 5.1 Dolby ® digital surround - widescreen 16.9,

and added:

This first release on SubDiva provides great value as it combines a full live concert along with a related documentary. Called 'Crow's Milk' and narrated by John Peel (ah, didn't i predict? - teejo), the film follows the band rehearsals in California in February 2003 to their first live shows in the UK later that year.

an e-billboard

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LATER REISSUE

a one-off subsidiary of proper music, delko, re-issued the veedee as a limited edition in 2013. the mail-order only product will be available as long as stocks last.
sadly, the manufacturers forgot to release a ntsc and / or region 0 version....

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