Japanese punks The Blue Hearts are resurrected with two new CD collections

by Chris MaGee

Here's a story that I'm kind of excited about and if you're a fan of Nobuhiro Yamashita's utterly charming 2005 coming-of-age comedy "Linda, Linda, Linda" you will be too. Yamashita's film centered around a group of four high school girls who form a rock band for their school's talent night. Headed up by Korean actress Bae Doo-na the quartet makes it their mission to master the songs of 80's and early 90's Japanese pop-punk band The Blue Hearts, specifically their 1987 hit "Linda, Linda, Linda". If you, like I, came out of that film saying to yourself, "I need to get my hands on some old Blue Hearts" CDs," then now's the perfect time.

Tokyograph is reporting that to commemorate the 25th anniversary of The Blue Hearts, who sadly broke up in 1995, a double CD best of collection titled "All Time Singles ~ Super Premium Best ~ 25th Kinenban" will be released in Japan on February 24th along with a tribute CD which features acts like Puffy, Beat Crusaders, Melon Kinebi, and Hitomi Yaida covering Blue Hearts songs. If these two releases end up turning you into a die hard Blue Hearts fan then you can also look forward to the band's first two remastered and re-issued albums to follow shortly thereafter.

I can sense a bunch of people logging onto CD Japan at this very moment... If you haven't caught The Blue Hearts bug up to this point then check out the song that launched the band to the top of the charts and into Nobuhiro Yamashita's film "Linda, Linda, Linda"... namely "Linda, Linda".