Chp 571. Reliving the music, Part 4.

I guess my series of "Reliving the music" blog posts triggered a nostalgic nerve in some of you, based on some of the comments I'm getting. We ended up discussing not just about the good ol' days of 90s music but also some of the popular comics and magazines in Mizoram those days :)

As my friends mentioned, those were not just the days of great music but also "Year books" and Archies "lyrics books". So in this post, I'll cover the music part briefly, and talk more about the memorable comics and magazines of those days (I'm just talking about the ones we used to get in Mizoram back then, and not in the metros). Discussions like this tend to make us go round and round, like a circle in the sand. And so here you have it - the first song of this post, Belinda Carlisle's "Circle in the sand" :)



I've featured her song "Leave a light on for me" on part 1 of this series of blog post. However, I love this song just as equally. "Sundown all around, Walking through the summer's end... Waves crash baby, don't look back, I won't walk away again." Such a soothing love song to listening to, especially by the beach on a quiet moonlit night... except of course I've never done that myself... yet.

Next up - Taylor Dayne - "Tell It To My Heart". Why don't they make songs like this anymore? :( "Tell it to my heart, Tell me I'm the only one, Is this really love or just a game? Tell it to my heart, I can feel my body rock every time you call my name..."



I'll just add two more music videos on this post, and both of them revolve around the word "Poison". Yep, here you go, "Poison" by Alice Cooper, and Poison performing "Talk dirty to me". Two of my favorite glam-rock/glam-metal bands from my very large collection of 90s rock music folder.

Remember those days how some of us used to sing Alice Cooper's "Poison" as - "One look, two look, three look, four look..."? :D



And then there's the band Poison. Most of the harder heavy-metal bands of those days used to call them "hairband pop rock" band in a mocking way because of their cheesy lyrics and long shaggy hair, but trust me, their music is way better than most of the so called music of today.

Here's "Talk dirty to me", a song that my sisters would always play in the car on any of our long road trips. And the beat really went well with the bumpy poorly-maintained roads of Mizoram back then.




And so those are some of the memorable music for today. Now coming to some of the comics/magazines of those day, here are two magazines I'm sure some of you will remember!





Haha, brings back a lot of memories huh? Many of us used to call the second magazine above as just "Kiss" but the proper name is actually "Photoromance Kiss", similar to the other one being "Photoromance Darling". Both of them were published by Lancio Corporation and are no longer available in the market, but you can still find them at e-bay and other such sites if you really want them.

Yeah I remember how some of us were truly awestruck by the clear photographs and I think many of us used to copy their fashion style based on what the models in the comic trips were wearing :)

And then there was "Blue Jeans". Again a photo based comic strip, but unlike Photoromance magazines, this was in black & white. This too was targeted mainly at teenage girls, but having three elder sisters back then, it was hard for me not to pick up one and read it while sitting in the loo. Remember, there were no mobile phones to play with while taking a dump those days :P





Now some of you may know this, but I didn't until years later. Blue Jeans is actually a girl's magazine published by DC Thomson, which has a lot of pop music, fashion, reader's confessions, pin-up posters etc in color. The black & white comics that we used to get in Mizoram, were created by the same publisher and the actual name for that series is "Blue Jeans Photo Novel". But then I think a lot of us used to call the comics as just Blue Jeans, which apparently is wrong :)

Speaking of DC Thomson, some of their other famous comics for girls were published under the names of Bunty, Mandy, Judy and Debbie. I'm sure those titles ring a bell for you...



And if not, I'm definitely sure at least this one will - "STAR love stories in pictures". This is again a romance based comic strip published by DC Thomson. Hehehe how many of these were lying around in our house back then. And then my sisters would trade their STAR comics with a friend's and such comics used to rotate across the city.









DC Thomson was the same publisher who gave us the "Commando" series of war comics. Now these comics appealed to me way more than the Star comics did :P I'm sure many of you have read some of the Commando comics below -








Now the best part about this is, if you want, you can still purchase the above Star and Commando comics! Yup, I have found an e-com site selling such comics, and here it is - ComiXology. Star comics cost £ 0.69 (INR 70) each while Commando comics cost £ 1.49 (INR 150) each, though I don't know about their shipping charges.

By the way, apart from DC Thomson comics there was also the IPC Magazine publications. How many of you remember the "Girl Picture Library" and "War Picture Library" series of comic books? Very similar to Star and Commando comics, they were actually competing with those comics. And they were all published by IPC Magazines.

I'm sure many of you have read some of the comics below...

 








So those are some of the comics I'll cover for today. Maybe I'll cover some more on my next update, but for now, I guess I'll end this post. I hope I was able to bring back some of your old memories and if so, I'm glad I could take you down memory lane :)

Feel free to tag some of your old-time friends to remind them about some of the golden comics and magazines we used to read back then :D

Cheers for now y'all.