_________ .`. `. / \ .======.\ | | |______|| | | _____ | _____ _ _ _____ _ _ | | / / | | _ |___|_|_| | |___|_| | | | /____/ | | | _| | . | | | | .'| | | | _ | | |__|__|___|_|___|_|_|_|__,|_|_| |/ \|.-"```"-.| Issue 16 / 2020-04-21 `` ||| ||| jgs `"` `" ------------------------------------------------- NEWSLETTER: Signin' Up To The UB40 https://neozones.neocities.org/acidjaw/mail/issue16 https://wiki.squeeze.pizza/index.php?title=AcidMail/issue16 This issue we have: * MMMMRRRRR MMMOOOOOONNNLIGHT! * More terrible newsletters to subscribe to * More carp, as usual; check it out if you want ------------------------------------------------- >WELCOME.EXE Welcome to the installation program that will help you install version 0.16 of AcidMail. To start the installation, please enter in you credit or debit card number in the box provided. If that is not an option for yourself, instead, please mail all of you money to NeoZones HQ. Remember that you won't get taxed if you don't declare it, yay to tax fraud! :D ------------------------------------------------- >A LOOK AT THE BEATLES - BEATLES FOR SALE (1964) I feel like while the band's last album, 'A Hard Day's Night', was over-all an improvement in what they can and cannot do, even at times showing early signs of experimenting with their music and risking losing (admittedly a small amount) money on a movie, their new record, Beatles For Sale, doesn't really show me that the band were willing to really take all that much of a risk. For me, Beatles For Sales kind of shows me that the band didn't really want to push the boat out, and would rather stick with what they knew was to be safe. The music on the album is very, well, 1960s, rather than ageless (as in, when you hear it, you could almost say "Oh, this was made in the 1960s", rather than it sounding ageless). Perhaps this is one of the biggest insults that I can say about the album is this; most of it sounds like it that were cut from their fist album. It's made up of slow songs that up until Mr Moonlight, don't *really* show me anything to turn me on to this album at all. In my opinion, Mr Moonlight is where the album gets better, John Lennon's singing is almost prot-prot-metal (funny how Paul McCartney would later invertedly make metal music with Helter Skelter) with his almost-screaming voice. Just a shame it is almost halfway through the album. After Mr Moonlight, Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey follows, a song so clearly a cover that it hurts. Still, the singing vocals of McCartney are great, it's almost like Mr Moonlight (that is also a cover) and this song are revels in a sense-of-the-word. Eight Days A Week is next. Apparently this is the stand-out track for the album as this is the only song that has a music video for it. It's not the best from the album (it's still good, but not the *best*), but it certainly has a catchy element to it, the clapping is here to help as always, same goes for the easy-to-learn lyrics for it. Earlier on, I said that this album sounds like their very early works, well, next up is "Words Of Love", a Buddy Holly cover. It's so funny to think that The Beatles were *still* covering Buddy Holly and other (mainly American) artists. For me, covering a song seems to be something that a band that is just breaking out would do, and not one that just made a very successful movie. Perhaps it could be said that that they really wanted to cover this song, or that they put all of their effort into writing other tracks. I feel like for a lot of the songs so-far that I have written about on this particular review, I have reviewed them in a way that, well, almost like I'm shitting on them. Please don't get me wrong, I *do* like the majority of them, well, just not the ones I didn't cover. Finally Ringo Starr gets his own song, Honey Don't; another cover song! By nature, Ringo is not a singer, he's a drummer (and often called THE best one at that), but the thing is, well, despite not putting singing at his best qualities, Ringo *is* a good singer, but just like George Harrison (who only gets ONE lead vocal song), he *can* sing, but his talent is never really shown. Starr is unlike most singers when it comes to his vocals; he's certainly not going to take the award for best singer in the group, but the thing is, that doesn't really matter all that much, as Starr makes up for it by his enthusiasm; it seems to me that Starr really wanted to utilise his only-song by trying his best, and honestly, I would rather hear a song that is not the best by sung by someone who cares a lot than play a song that is A M A Z I N G but sung by someone who is foaming it in. After that, we have Every Little Thing - again, this song feels like it was written in the early days of the band. I don't really know how to describe it, it just has a quality to it. I think that a telling sign that it feels like it is an early song is the fact that I was certain that this was going to be a cover of a Buddy Holly song, but nope, it is original. Honestly, it is forgettable at best, same goes for the nest song, I Don't Want to Spoil the Party, where it could have just been a cover of a girl group from Motown. Semi-love song is bland - shame the tambourine doesn't save it. "What You're Doing" is the second-to-last track, sure it feels like a cover (it's not a cover), but it sounds like a good one that could have been a slow song turned fast. the vocals of all of the singers sounds great, same for the interments. McCartney has such a good singing range here, and the humming in the background just makes it ten times better. Great song where everything is right. Finally we have a George Harrison song, and it's a bloody cover song, AHHHGG! I am so disappointed that no-one in the band or production realised that Harrison can sing and sing *well*. Yes, of course this song sounds great, it's sung by one of the best singers in the band who got seemly got shafted by having only one slot. Why did they not think about putting Harrison into more songs where they take the lead? Why, why, why? Honestly, this album has a lot of fat to it (side one), not realising while recording demos that *some* of the songs can be cut and songs by Harrison (and even Starr) could be the replacement is a damn shame. Is this album worth a play? Sure, I guess in the background while you work can't be of harm, but keep in mind that I (a random person on the WWW), think that A Hard Day's Night is kilometers better than this upgraded-demo of an album. Next week, it's 'Help!', stay tuned. ------------------------------------------------- >EW, NO It's so vile to think that there are people right now out there in the world who are not using the ISO 8601 date format, ew, no. ------------------------------------------------- >ASCII OF THE NOW The ASCII of The Now is a weekly thing we do where we dig threw the old archives of forgotten websites, finding ASCII art that time forgot. | ______ _ _ _ %%o |)) @) |___ / | | (_) | | | | |'| \\ / / ___ | |_ _ ___| | | | |~_) )) / / / \| __| |/ _ \ | ( ( |'_ // / /_( (_) | |_| | __/ | \ \ |/ (/ |_____\___/ \__|_|\___|_| \ \| | Having the amazing ability |-=| | to cut him self in half is | |=-| his trade mark... /)_/|\ \ ...whats yours? // _'| \ \ He can teach you how for // (.-| ) ) just 3 easy installments (( |'| | | of $29.95 each *act now* ZOT \\ ||| | | neverclan@geocities.com _______@)___|__o%%______________________________ "These are a few of the signatures I've used over the years" writes Zotiel R. Bell, a person that I could not really find all that much on. From looking at their now-offline website from c. 2007, Bell liked to write their own poetry and also like the idea of being a nudist. https://owlman.neocities.org/ascii.html#Zot https://web.archive.org/web/20081121091953/http://jasnetworks.net/zotiel/ascii/ascii.html https://web.archive.org/web/20081221104041/http://members.jasnetworks.net/zotiel/ascii/Sig.html ------------------------------------------------- >NEWSLETTERS TO FOLLOW As it turns out, AcidMail is not the only newsletter to have been made (omg) and that there are others that you should not only read, but also follow, oh my, oh my! : BOOMER EMAIL : https://boomer.email Ever had an old person send you (or even show you in person) a terrible meme that only people of a certain age could find to be funny? Well if not (count your lucky stars), you can experiences it now thanks to Boomer Email, yay! : B3TA NEWSLETTERS : https://b3ta.com/newsletter/ It's B3TA, a British community that has been running semi-weekly newsletters since 2001. Always worth a read, if not for the link section. Unsurprisingly, it was the inspiration behind AcidMail. : NEOCITIES TRIBUNE : https://yoohoosearch.neocities.org/theneocitiestribune/ The newsletter is all about Neocities (hence the name), and is well worth a read if you're also on that host and want to know what is currently happening. I am ashamed to admit that I did not know about this newsletter until this week until I found-out about it thanks to Bytemoth of cd5k.net, so thank you! : NEOKNIGHT INQUIRER : https://roseknight.org/oomoox/ More newsletters that are also semi-about Neocities, this time by Roseknight. Seemly a more personal mewsletter than most, but still worth a look-over. So far there are only two issues out, and the first one isn't indexed all that well, so to get to it, you need to type in /oomoox/volX.html, the X being a number. : QUARANTINE ZINE CLUB : https://quarantinezineclub.neocities.org Well, looks like I don't *really* need to write all that much about this link, as there is already a good bio for the meta name description; "Quarantine Zine Club will keep you connected to the zine community! You can share your zines, read zines & engage with zinesters from around the world!" ------------------------------------------------- >FORMER NEWSLETTER TO LAUGH AT The sand's of time can be cruel to newsletter that are no longer updated, so here are some from the vaults that you can fully enjoy and binge-read - oh boy. : OWLMAIL : https://owlman.neocities.org/owlmail/ : https://wiki.squeeze.pizza/index.php?title=OwlMail Crap but kind of charming newsletter by yours truly (Owly; Hello) from 2017 to '18. The newsletter has some alright stuff in it, and despite myself making it, I would recommend to check it out as I do think that it is up there in okay-ness. I will say this, while making the newsletter, it really was a rush at times and had a bumpy history of being written at the last moment (like AcidMail!) As of publication of this newsletter, the old newsletter has now been mirrored onto the new and quite frankly sexy Penny's Pages Wiki for all to... enjoy[?], but the issues can still be viewed in their original format via the OwlMan website - oh joy... : NEWSLETTERS BY JAKEONLINE : https://wiki.squeeze.pizza/index.php?title=Newsletters_by_JakeOnline Newsletter almost forgot by time. The JakeOnline newsletters are... not really the best, but saying that, they *were* made by a 12-year-old who was exposed to the horrors of the WWW. Might be worth a check if you want to make your own newsletter. : NEOMAIL : https://wiki.squeeze.pizza/index.php?title=NeoMail Seeing that I will never get to talk about it again, here is the NeoMail mailing list, or just NeoMail, an unofficial mailing list for members of Neocities that was first set-up in 2016 by MelonKing. Quite some interesting reads about the opinions of what was going on in the world of Neocities. ------------------------------------------------- >CREDITS Thank you to everyone who has helped in the making of this newsletter and helping past ones also. : DAVID VILLEGAS : http://www.patorjk.com/software/taag/#p=display&f=Rectangles Font at the top is called rectangles.flf and was made by David Villegas <mnementh@netcom.com> in 1994-12. As with a lot of websites, netcom.com is now offline, so contacting Villegas might be hard. The font was found on patorjk.com, as linked. : JOAN G. STARK : https://owlman.neocities.org/ascii.html#jgs The postbox ASCII by the text was made by Joan G. Stark, found via asciiart.eu https://asciiart.eu/miscellaneous/mailbox : KYLE DRAKE : https://kyledrake.com Thank you to Kyle Drake of kyledrake.com who was the head leader behind Neocities, a webhost where AcidJaw and NeoZones was first hosted. :TEH LEROY, EMILY, and BYTEMOTH : https://tehleroy.neocities.org/ : https://chameleon.neocities.org/ : https://cd5k.net/ Thank you to Randy for writing last week's edition of the newsletter while I was doing work on the Penny's Pages Wiki (as linked at the very top of this edition), please check it out as I know that he put a lot of work into it, aaahhhhh! Also thanks to emily and Bytemoth for having a read-through of this issue. ------------------------------------------------- >UNTIL NEXT TIME AcidMail would not be possible if it were not for the amazing friends over on at NeoZones, a webhome that was only made so we could hangout more. To browse more projects by the people behind AcidMail, please checkout our other works at: https://neozones.neocities.org. Do you have something that you want to show off in a future edition of the weekly newsletter? If you do, you can always shoot us an E-Mail over at acidjaw@airmail.cc, you can also pop-in and say hello in our very amazing Discord server! https://neozones.neocities.org/discord/ See you 'till next week!