Appearing in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1 in 2002, The 5,6,7,8's stepped into the international limelight. But this weekend, for the first time, they step onto Taiwan. As the retro-pop punk band rehearsed two days before coming, they spoke to the Taipei Times and showed they're not just about their quirky retro outfits, but are all about the music.
Taipei Times: This is the first time to Taiwan. What do you want to do when you get here?
Ronnie Fujiyama (lead singer): Honestly I don't know much about Taiwan except that there are a lot of good foods there. So we hope to try out different foods.
TT: Can you introduce the members of your band?
RF: There are more than three vocalists working on the band, but as we are not a mainstream musical band, and don't make enough money everyone has other jobs to make a living.
For the three vocals there's me, Yoshiko Ronnie Fujiyama ? my real name is actually Yoshiko Fuji, but it gets confused with the second member, Sachiko Fuji. I've changed my family name to Fujiyama. Ronnie was added to my name cuz on the set of Kill Bill there was another girl called Yoshiko.
Sachiko Fuji works at a vintage costume store. And Akiko Omo is the busiest. She's a graphic designer.
TT: How did the idea of retro "punk pop music" come about?
RF: We all like 1960s music.
TT: Where do you get your costumes?
RF: We make them ourselves. And we also got some from the set of Kill Bill.
TT: What about the hair? Is that real hair?
RF: It's real. I just really like the retro look. I asked the hairdresser to teach me how to make our hair like that. It takes about 30 minutes every time to set it up.
TT: Quentin Tarantino said you girls are his favorite band. What do you think of that?
RF: Well, we are happy to hear about that. We're happy if anyone likes our music. It doesn't matter if it's someone as famous as Tarantino. Even if it was the ojisan (old grandpa) next door saying that it would make us happy.
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