The
DVD-Project was originally planned
for autumn 2004 and so one fine day the parcel service dropped an
enormous box in our Fuego office. It was filled with about 60 Beta-Tapes,
20 VHS and countless DV-Tapes containing everything from TV-Broadcasts,
different angle shots of live-concerts without sound, bits and pieces
from the tapes we did the Live-DVD from, Interviews to Home movies
of the band.
More than a week and hours after fours of watching
the tapes I - Friedel, the 'visual designer
of the Apes' - was totally confused and seriously worried if
I could manage to get a structure for that video mess at all.
I called the record company and the Guano Apes and said - "Nothing's
working over here, I don't know how to go on,... I don't wanna do this
anymore..." - the universal answer was - "You can do it! don't
worry! Who else is more involved into the band's history and knows how
things fit together if not you?..." Next day I courageously continued
running through videos, videos, videos and wrote long lists to get an
overview and structure of the material I had.
 Bad
thing was that the numerous DV-Tapes that the band
had filmed over years had disappeared somewhere in
somebody's mess which lead to everyone of us crawling through
our homes in search for some GA footage. Even though the DV
Tapes still remain untraceable Dennis found a VHS Tape of the Guano
Apes' first show with Sandra in Moringen from 1994 -
of course we put some of that on the DVD! - and there's some
footage of an early version of 'Open Your Eyes' from
a gig in a school aula in Northeim in 19995, two years
before that song appeared on an album.
I cut all that and of course many more footage together with the band
interviews into a 60 minute Documentary Part we called 'THE
MOVIE' about the history of the Guano Apes. Some of you
might recognize bits and pieces of the material as many of you have followed
the band's history intensively. But there's also a lot of footage and
pictures of the band you have never seen before!
 As
a very special addition there are the 'lost tapes' of
the Festival Sudoeste show from August 6, 2000 in front of 60.000
portuguese fans.
It was such a coincidence that I found those tapes when I fast forwarded
a big Beta-Tape with a sticker on it saying 'Portugal' .
After 30 minutes of black screen suddenly this wonderful
condert began! I can't explain why I was patiently watching exactly this
tape, as you woukd normally stop after 5-10 minutes of black screen and
skip over to another video tape, I felt this was something special and
kept watching... strange things sometimes happen and we are happy to
present you about an hour of that show on the DVD. Here's the tracklisting:
LIVE at SUDOESTE
- No speech
- Gogan
- Rain
- Living in a lie
- Heaven
- Move a little closer
- We use the pain
- Ain't got time
- I want it
- Big in Japan
- Wash it down
- Dödel up
Living in a lie - Video Audience Taping
- Lords of the boards
And of course there are the missing clips including 'Kumba
Yo!', all of which had not been included on the  'Don't
give me names' DVD.
THE CLIPS
- You Can't Stop Me
- Pretty In Scarlet
- Quietly
- Break The Line
- Sing That Song
- Dödel Up
- Kumba Yo!
...
and there is "THE FANBASE" - that's your
part! - and was a lot of work , too. Many of you
have sent in pictures and videos and in the end I had 884 photos
in my Inbox.
Some of them so tiny I could hardly use them, some of them I received
3-4 times, and I didn't have enough time to open all of them and optimize
them for the DVD so I produced a Slideshow and cut out the ones I couldn't
use. There are also some clips from Videotapes for example from the Fan-Meeting
in Oberhausen.
But one of the greatest things was sent in from Michaela Bartl (Thanks!) the
third Guano Apes Cassette-Demo, the ones that were on
auction at Ebay some time ago. I gave away the tape for denoising and
finally used it as a soundtrack for the Fanbase-Movie. Now you can all
enjoy the music of the very early Guano Apes and don't have to search
ebay anymore.And also there's some short comment of the band about that
demo-tape. 'FANBASE' contains following songs:
- Wasserfliege - unreleased track
- Get Busy - demo
- Rain - demo
- Ignatz = Suzie demo
- Score - unreleased track
- Tribute - demo
- 3°under - unreleased track
Ok, I'll stop writing now to keep some surprises
for you on the DVD. Just a quick final note to give you a hint of a
very special and experimental Multimedia Part in the DVD
which features footage from the Italy Tour in 2000. Of course this
multimedia part is only playable on a computer with DVD-Rom-Drive
and quicktime and not in your DVD-Player.
And as I stated before the cover still shows the wrong running time because
it had to be finished earlier for the production. It says running time
is 180 minutes but eventually I managed to put 242
minutes on it! that's 4 hours of videos!! And
of course we added english subtitles so you can get a clue of what's
been talked about ;-)
Released on February 7th 2005
Maybe you got an impression how much effort went
into the production of this DVD and we all hope you enjoy it as much
as we do! I'm so excited about how you will like it! Please send
us your feedback!
All the best!
FRIEDEL
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