A good week for the Under the Radar stories we like to find, read and recommend to an intelligent and curious audience.  Even if you quit the news, you can't help but hear all of it.  We know that, and there are many other writers and outlets you can go to for that.  We want great stories about people, things, art, and music that everyone can relate to.  What does that look like?

Today we write about D&D and where some of us might have started telling stories based on prompts in a basement.  Next, we highlight another Substack called Noted, a wonderful newsletter about notes, and we dive into Kurt Cobain's notebooks.  A beautiful picture of the big blue marble we spin around on, and we wrap up with Austin City Limits trying to improve ticket transparency.  Who would the audience be for all of that?  Anyone who wants to spend 5 to 10 minutes thinking about the stories, art, and music that influenced who they are.  We hope you enjoy it!

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When Dungeons & Dragons came out in the 80s, it was sort of like an early version of ChatGPT, you were given a prompt, and a team of basement dwellers discussed it and provided a response; someone with the book or board took the response and followed with a result or another prompt.  Storytelling with prompts and without the players knowing they were involved with storytelling.  Yasmin Tayag writes for The Atlantic and remembers playing Dungeons and Dragons with her friends during the pandemic; you could call that a reboot.  The desire to go back outside and be with people returned as the world re-opened.  Tayag and her friends put the game back on the shelf. 

The new movie Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brought Tayag and her friends together to watch the movie and sparked the possibility of bringing back the D&D group for more storytelling.  Tayag writes about the movie and her friends in this week's Culture Survey from The Atlantic.  In addition to movie recommendations, Tayag talks about indie music from the 90s, like one of our favorites, Metric and Dashboard Confessional.  Other music recommendations even made it into our With A Shout Playlist.

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In a new Substack recommended by Substack, writer Julian Hess writes Noted, a Substack about notebooks and note-taking.  Hess is also an English professor and knows how to write.  Also, "Note," Hess has been highlighted by Substack's Featured Publication 2023; she's got the goods.

Noted is now in our feed; you should add her to yours, and the first read for us was her review of Kurt Cobain's spiralbound notebooks.  In the early 90s, some of us were in college, listening to college radio stations and MTVs 120 Minutes on Sunday nights.  The alt-rock scene was one you had to work for; Nirvana was not on the radio.  I will never forget hearing Smells Like Teen Spirit in the 90s, and the best comparison I can make is to The Clash or The Sex Pistols in the late 70s.  It wasn't the words; it was the music, a combination of heavy metal with the speed of skate punk and the words of another punk rock poet.  Kurt didn't speak for us; he spoke to us and gave a vocal theme to our own angst.

One of my favorite quotes is from Calvin Coolidge; it speaks to many of us who didn't make it through a post-high school education but found our own ways to build things.

Dave Grohl, from Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, always talks about how serious Nirvana was about songwriting, musicianship, practice, and how good they wanted to be.  It's tricky to show a persona of punk rock kids who care about nothing and turn around and write and perform like The Beatles.  If you weren't born with talent or in a place that would help you develop it, or education, you are left with determination and the persistence to get there.  Hess goes even deeper into Cobain's notebooks and some of the struggles that come with a person who so desperately needs to get the emotions out.  It may have contributed to many ailments he struggled with throughout his youth. 

PetaPixel, a website we have featured before, has new pictures of the earth taken by The European Space Agency (ESA).  Add this to the idea that things are easier to see and solve from a 10,000-foot view.  The world can be beautiful when you look at it from the proper perspective.

In addition to putting together another incredible lineup for the 2023 festival, Austin City Limits is also working to be fair and transparent about ticket prices.  We picked up the story from Digital Music News, and they link to both a tweet from ACL and the ACL website for all the details.  Any venue that can sell tickets without needing a third-party provider will be one of the ways we can improve the ticket-purchasing experience.

Nothing lasts...

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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