Much to my neighbors loss of peace and quiet, I just spent tonight getting rocked by Chatmonchy’s “Restaurant Main Dish”. The all girl trio of rockers released the two disc live DVD set in November 2008 and I finally got my hands on it! The first DVD is Chatmonchy’s concert from April 1, 2008, at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo. The second DVD is footage from Chatmonchy (チャットモンチー) shows during their “Seimeiryoku Minagiri Tour” from November 2007 to January 2008. You might ask why did it take a Chatmonchy fan like me so long to get a copy? Because the first pressing of “Restaurant Main Dish” was sold out! The DVD edition has been re-released, and a Blu-ray Disc edition was just released last week!

The concert opens up with Chatmonchy coming out into the crowd while American indie rock classic “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies fills the stadium (The only Pixies song I ever liked, btw). Chatmonchy do a Bond Girl pose in the middle of the crowd and then they hit the stage! As always, their performance is phenomenal. The concert video was shot with more cameras than I could keep count of. (I will prob go back and make a better effort to count the cameras). There are a few crowd interactions parts left in, but the editing is so slick, you’d never think there was any downtime between songs. Your only clues to “real time” are the different guitars being played depending on the song and water bottles on stage get more and more empty in the background.

You might think I know Chatmonchy from their song “Daidai” during the end credits of Bleach — but no!

I discovered Chatmonchy in a little record shop on the outskirts of Akihabara in 2006. They were just coming out and the CD was in the “new artist” section. I gave it a listen and there was no doubt that I was about to part with ¥3,059. (Yes, CDs in Japan are expensive.) I originally had gone into the store looking for out of print SUPERCAR (スーパーカー) CDs. SUPERCAR had broken up the year before (2005) much to my great sadness. I walked out of the store with three CDs from SUPERCAR: “Highvision”, “Answer” and “16/50 1997-1999″ - and Chatmonchy’s “Miminari 耳鳴り” CD.

Three years later and Chatmonchy is without a doubt my fave Jrock band today. In fact, I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who claims to listen to Jrock but doesn’t know Chatmonchy. It’s not an accident they’re on the mighty Ki/oon record label and selling out stadiums now. It also turned out to be no accident that I fell in love with Chatmonchy — when I got back to the US, I found out SUPERCAR’s Junji Ishiwatari produced Chatmonchy’s first album “Chatmonchy Has Come” for Ki/oon records! /fate. /destiny.

Check out Chatmonchy’s “Renai Spirits” video!

And my favorite SUPERCAR video - “White Surf Style 5″!
Warning: NSFW!!!