SONG OF THE DAY

“Woo Hoo” by The 5678’s (Bomb The Twist, Time Bomb Records, 1996). Cover of the 1959 sin­gle by The Rock-A-Teens.

INTERESTING FACTS (from wikipedia)

- “Woo Hoo” is a rock­a­billy song, orig­i­nally released by The Rock-A-Teens in 1959.

- The song is dis­tinc­tive for its lack of lyrics apart from its title words, which gave it pop­u­lar­ity around the world as it is not sub­ject to lan­guage bar­ri­ers. It makes use of the twelve-bar blues chord pro­gres­sion, fur­ther adding to its accessibility.

- It was later cov­ered by the Scot­tish rock band, The Rezil­los, (under the name “Yeah Yeah”), under the same title by the french psy­chobilly (or as they say them­selves, “yéyé–punk”) band Les Wampas on their 1988 album, Chauds, sales et humides, by the Japan­ese girl band The 5.6.7.8’s on their 1996 album Bomb the Twist and as a dance/electronica track in 2005 by the Amer­i­can­The Dal­tron­ics. It was also cov­ered by Showaddywaddy.

- The 5.6.7.8’s ver­sion gained cult pop­u­lar­ity when it was fea­tured and per­formed by them in Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 movie Kill Bill: Vol. 1. The 5.6.7.8’s ver­sion is also included on the Kill Bill Vol­ume 1 sound­track. Addi­tion­ally, it appears in the movie Glory Road.

It has been fea­tured in adver­tise­ments for Car­ling beer (UK), Von­age (USA and Canada), and Chevy Cobalt. Chevrolet’s adver­tis­ing agency, Campbell-Ewald of War­ren, Mich., pro­duced the Cobalt spot. Its chief cre­ative offi­cer, Bill Lud­wig, says the orig­i­nal theme song ‘had no value to us any­more’ once agency exec­u­tives real­ized the ad was shar­ing ‘Woo Hoo’ with the broad­band phone com­pany Von­age of Edi­son, N.J.” [Wouldn’t you have loved to have seen their faces at Chevro­let when they real­ized the con­se­quences of not hav­ing pur­chased exclu­sive rights to the song?

- You can hear the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the song here: http://www.starcitypunk.com/content/music/rockateens_woohoo1.mp3

- The 5.6.7.8’s are an all-female Japan­ese garage rock trio, whose music is rem­i­nis­cent of Amer­i­can surf music, rock­a­billy and garage rock. Each mem­ber is from Tokyo, Japan. They fre­quently cover songs from Amer­i­can rock and roll records. They made a brief appear­ance in the 2003 Quentin Taran­tino film Kill Bill Vol­ume 1, where they were shown play­ing bare­foot in an izakaya.

- The 5.6.7.8’s formed when Sachiko and Yoshiko “Ron­nie” Fujiyama, two sis­ters from Tokyo who both shared a pas­sion for rock and roll, founded the band in 1986 with two other mem­bers. Orig­i­nally, the lineup con­sisted of Yoshiko onvo­cals and gui­tar, “Rico” on sec­ond gui­tar, “Yoshie” on bass gui­tar and Sachiko on drums. After sev­eral line-up changes (includ­ing the bassist Yoshiko Yam­aguchi, who was the bassist fea­tured in the Kill Bill movie), the band even­tu­ally became a three­some after Rico and Yoshie’s depar­tures. Yoshiko and Sachiko are still the main com­po­nents in the band, and now Akiko Omo has rejoined the band as the bass guitarist.

- Even though the group mostly sing their songs in Japan­ese, they do many cov­ers on Amer­i­can rock and roll records from the 1950s to the 1980s. How­ever, their offi­cial web­site and most of their fan­sites and fan­clubs are in Japan­ese, as they have the biggest fol­low­ing in Japan and have done count­less per­for­mances in their home country.

- The 5.6.7.8’s recently became known in the West after their appear­ance in Kill Bill Vol. 1, in which they per­formed “I Walk Like Jayne Mans­field”, “I’m Blue” (a cover of The Ikettes’ song) and “Woo Hoo” in a Tokyo club, “The House Of Blue Leaves”.

- Accord­ing to Kill Bill’s direc­tor Quentin Taran­tino, he dis­cov­ered the music of the 5.6.7.8’s after hear­ing it in an urban cloth­ing store in Tokyo hours before going to the air­port. Taran­tino asked if he could pur­chase the CD from the store, as he had no time to go to a music shop. When the store clerk on duty said no, as the man­ager was not present at the time, Taran­tino offered dou­ble the retail price of the CD and acquired it.

Track list­ing from the Kill Bill Vol. 1 sound­track:

1. “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” by Nancy Sina­tra – 2:40
2. “That Cer­tain Female” by Char­lie Feath­ers – 3:02
3. “The Grand Duel (Parte Prima)” by Luis Bacalov – 3:24
4. “Twisted Nerve” by Bernard Her­rmann – 1:27, from the epony­mous film.
5. “Queen of the Crime Coun­cil” by Lucy Liu and Julie Drey­fus – 0:56
6. “Ode To O-ren Ishii” by The RZA – 2:05
7. “Run Fay Run” by Isaac Hayes – 2:46
8. “Green Hor­net Theme” by Al Hirt – 2:18
9. “Bat­tle With­out Honor or Human­ity” by Tomoy­asu Hotei – 2:28
10. “Don’t Let Me Be Mis­un­der­stood” by Santa Esmer­alda – 10:29
11. “Woo Hoo” (cover The Rock-A-Teens) by The 5.6.7.8’s – 1:59
12. “Crane/White Light­ning” by The RZA and Charles Bern­stein – 1:37
13. “The Flower of Car­nage” by Meiko Kaji – 3:52, from Lady Snow­blood
14. “The Lonely Shep­herd” by Ghe­o­rghe Zam­fir and James Last – 4:20
15. “You’re My Wicked Life” by David Car­ra­dine, Julie Drey­fus and Uma Thur­man – 1:14
16. “Iron­side” (excerpt) by Quincy Jones – 0:16
17. “Super 16″ (excerpt) by Neu! – 1:06
18. “Yakuza Oren 1″ by The RZA – 0:22
19. “Ban­is­ter Fight” by The RZA – 0:21
20. “Flip Sting” (SFX) – 0:04
21. “Sword Swings” (SFX) – 0:05
22. “Axe Throws” (SFX) – 0:11

VIDEO OF THE DAY