In the times when The Divine Comedy were signed to Parlophone, the band issued a couple of fan-club only CDs, kind of live EPs, featuring a cover version. These CDs were not home-made releases by the fan-club but were produced by EMI/Parlophone. And now they are quite valuable because they don’t go on sale very often, since they are mainly kept (more or less) well by (current or former) fans.
This second CD, following a first issue at the end of the Regeneration era and line-up, was issued in late 2004 and this would be the last since it was a farewell to the fan-club. Indeed, after more than 7 years of existence, probably due to a lack of subscriptions at the time where electronic communication was becoming predominant to physical letters, the Divine Comedy fan-club ceased to exist. The idea was to replace it with a dedicated section on the band’s website called The Inner Circle, but it never really took off because of a lack of content management policy (and nowadays with social networks the question is quite obsolete, as community management took over content management…). In addition to fan-club members, a few copies were also sent to winners of a competition held at The Divine Comedy’s forum at the time.

Like the previous release, this is another live EP with extracts from the tour, more precisely from the 3-piece acoustic tour in June 2004, when the band played 3 nights at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre. The opening track is a cover version of The Flaming Lips’ ‘Do You Realize?’ and was recorded during a rehearsal session; while the two others, ‘Going Downhill Fast’ and ‘Lucy’, were recorded on June 16th. A few years later another song, a cover of Tom Lehrer’s ‘I Hold Your Hand In Mine’ would be released on MySpace for a few months, that track being impossible to find nowadays.

The artwork features two classic photos from the Absent Friends armchair pictures. The first being one with Neil, and the back cover with the empty chair. The front cover just has the band’s name, the disc hasn’t got an official name actually. On the other side the back cover says ‘Special edition fan club release. Not for sale’ with the catalogue number and a thanks message to the fan-club members. It also has of course the tracklisting plus contact info for the fan club and credits such as publishing, recording information, the band’s line-up, and artwork credits.
Finally, it has a long copyright note. Like the previous Parlophone release, the single Absent Friends, the note refers to the Capitol label, and a ‘Music from EMI’ is to be found alongside the Parlophone logo. Then, we can also spot a standard EMI serial number: 7243 8 76602 2 9

The disc is designed like the other releases from the Absent Friends era, and features some of the information from the back cover: tracklisting, copyright note (although no mention of Capitol Records), serial number, and a Parlophone logo. Near its centre we can read: IFPI LW02 MEDIAMOTION 8766022 @ 1