The Lind & Linders -- Moero Circuit（燃えろサーキット）

Y'know...when it comes to Group Sounds, I've been accustomed to the various band lineups basing their names on animals. We've had spiders, tigers and even an ox. But this is a first for me. I had never heard of a GS band being named after a Bond girl!

And yet, according to the January 1986 issue of "Nekkyou GS Zukan"（熱狂GS図鑑...The Group Sounds Guide for Fanatics）via J-Wiki, The Lind & Linders（ザ・リンド&リンダース）were indeed named after Vesper Lynd, the femme fatale from the original 1953 Ian Fleming novel "Casino Royale". Apparently the founder of the band, Hiroshi Kato（加藤ヒロシ）, had read it and enjoyed the character.

Kato, a jazz guitarist, was approached by the president of an entertainment company in Osaka in the summer of 1965 and was requested to start up some sort of Kansai guitar band. So Kato gathered together four members including himself to start as The Lind, but then came the addition of three vocalists who would form The Linders. Thus a Group Sounds band was born which first caught fire in the jazz cafe circuit and made regular appearances on the local radio station, MBS, before branching out into TV.

The Lind & Linders' released their debut single, "Guitar Komoriuta"（ギター子守唄...Guitar Lullaby）in February 1967, but I found their 2nd single (March 1967) on YouTube, "Moero Circuit" (Burn Circuit), a very short tune starting off with a nifty guitar pretending to be a racing car revving up before going into a melody that is reminiscent of The Ventures. Kazuki Takagi（高木和来）took care of the vocals, and his delivery kinda reminds me of a young version of enka singer Shinichi Mori（森進一）. Leader Kato came up with the music while the lyrics were handled by Shuji Terayama（寺山修司）. Takagi and one other Linder would leave following this year to form another GS band, The Sunny Five（ザ・サニー・ファイブ）.

With a number of changes in the lineup, The Lind & Linders lasted for pretty much the breadth of the GS boom before calling it quits in 1970, after releasing a total of 7 singles.