i retaped over some footage and now i'm seeing horizontal bands of the old footage playing along with the new footage. did i just screw up the camera or the tape?

can the new footage be recovered in any way?

i went back and did some recording with the cap on and after a few minutes i then recorded over the black. everything came out fine so i'm thinking that it had to do with me recording over motion instead of a the static black. is the new information that seems to be with the old info recoverable?

No, it sounds like you may be (have?) experienced a dirty playback/record head. The footage is possibly recorded that way, in which case there is nothing you can do to recover the footage. Try playing the tape in another DV camera or VCR. If it still plays back poorly, it was recorded that way, and your out of luck. But be sure to clean your heads and test both record and playback before using your camera again.

Keep in mind that it is better to just use a tape once. Definitely
will avoid these kind of problems that way.