A Thought About Some of the Radio Music

KingWhurlder

KingWhurlder

First time out of the vault
Stray observation about Fallout 4:
So, this game has several novelty tunes on the in-game radio making explicit, light-hearted, references to atomic power, radiation and nuclear bombs, like Atom Bomb Baby, by the Five Stars, which was featured prominently in the trailers.

Normally, I wouldn't at all be considering the verisimilitude of the radio music in these games. Because, whatever, the world this music comes from is supposed to be a joke, and the music is just an extension of that joke. No, the reason I'm scratching my head and considering the role of the music in this latest Fallout game, is that for the first time, the pre-war world (And the nostalgic sentiment that the player character has towards it) is treated with 100% sincerity. As such, I find myself seriously wondering how a real world that's supposed to be ULTRA-NATIONALISTIC, to the point of psychopathy, would actually react to lyrics like:

"Crawl out through the fallout, baby
When they drop that bomb
Crawl out through the fallout
With the greatest of aplomb
When your white count's getting higher
Hurry, don't delay
I'll hold you close and kiss those
Radiation burns away"
-Sheldon Allman - Crawl out Through the Fallout

^ Would that be the in universe equivalent of punk rock, because in context, those lyrics are extremely subversive, like, to the point of probably being a very serious crime in a society that we are first introduced to through thuggish soldiers brutally executing Canadian rebels

I don't know, maybe Bethesda just means for this to be part of the gag and I've fallen for it totally. But, considering the fact that, on their last go around, these were the guys who didn't consider the ramifications of giving the player a robot who can dispense infinite water... and making the crux of the main story mission hydrating a wasteland. In short, probably not.
 
I don't think they thought about it considering most of the new tracks added are the same ones added by the Conelrad radio station mod for FO3/FNV.
 
Eh, I think it's more weird that apparently nobody in the Fallout universe wrote new music for about a hundred years.
To be fair, it's hard to write music from the future, just listen to the legendary Raumpatroullie Orion:


I think the pop-music in the actual Fallout-year 2077 would probably sound more like an american version of Kraftwerk or something like that. Analogue synthesizer sounds, stuff like that. Given that the world was slowly going down the shitter probably a lot less happy than the 50's music in the game...
 
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Hassknecht said:
I think the pop-music in the actual Fallout-year 2077 would probably sound more like an american version of Kraftwerk or something like that. Analogue synthesizer sounds, stuff like that. Given that the world was slowly going down the shitter probably a lot less happy than the 50's music in the game...
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I'll say again, I find the ambient tracks for FO1 and 2 to be decent candidates for future listening-tunes
As with much experimental/electronic music, they have "a bit of everything", some traditional sounds, some digital sounds

There's computers available in the setting, and traditional instruments. There's even a tape recorder in the RP iirc :V

I'll also say again - some of the western selection for New Vegas is timeless enough to fit, well, just by being timeless, such as Johnny Guitar. I see no reason why such a song could not have been written, composed and performed in that very time and place.

As for "Crawl out to the Fallout", yeah, someone TOLD the inhabitants of North America that they're only puppets in a fictional reality, and that it's called "Fallout", and they found it hilariously ironic, so they repeatedly played a song on the radio mentioning their fictious reality by name *eyerolls straight through my head*, man that song is lame... It's not even a bad song, it's just lame in the context...
 
It was the first song I heard when I turned on Diamond City Radio. Rolled my eyes so hard I'm pretty sure it was audible.
 
In universe I wonder where the heck the wimpy dj found a recording of the "Crawl out Through the Fallout" when the song was 117 years old when the bombs fell in 2077, assuming it was still written in 1960. Did it become popular among the counter culture of the 2070s?
 
They should have gotten whoever wrote those awesome alt history German 60's songs from Wolfenstein: The New Order to write some songs for the game.
 
Hassknecht said:
Eh, I think it's more weird that apparently nobody in the Fallout universe wrote new music for about a hundred years.
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They did write new music, all of it was just lost in the war.

Three Dog and Travis mention all the music they have is from old records.
 
Someguy37 said:
Hassknecht said:
Eh, I think it's more weird that apparently nobody in the Fallout universe wrote new music for about a hundred years.
Click to expand...
They did write new music, all of it was just lost in the war.

Three Dog and Travis mention all the music they have is from old records.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure Hassknecht is talking about post war, which is making me wonder if there's so much pre-war food lying around then why wouldn't people find instruments as well? Same thing with other salvageable technology they could use to make music.
 
Someguy37 said:
Hassknecht said:
Eh, I think it's more weird that apparently nobody in the Fallout universe wrote new music for about a hundred years.
Click to expand...
They did write new music, all of it was just lost in the war.

Three Dog and Travis mention all the music they have is from old records.
Click to expand...

It still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I mean, why would only the old records survive and absolutely NONE of the newer records? Especially since we know that many, many holotapes (which seem to be a storage medium that's more than capable of storing music) did survive the war and following next 200 years. But for some magical plot-reason ONLY a few select songs from the 50's survived? Nah, I don't buy it.

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MercenarySnake said:
Someguy37 said:
Hassknecht said:
Eh, I think it's more weird that apparently nobody in the Fallout universe wrote new music for about a hundred years.
Click to expand...
They did write new music, all of it was just lost in the war.

Three Dog and Travis mention all the music they have is from old records.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure Hassknecht is talking about post war, which is making me wonder if there's so much pre-war food lying around then why wouldn't people find instruments as well? Same thing with other salvageable technology they could use to make music.
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I meant pre-war, but yes, post-war is also a thing.
And yes, Someguy, we know some dumb cunt in the Capital Wasteland had you search for a Stradivari so she could play it on her radio station. Not the point.
 
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MercenarySnake said:
I'm pretty sure Hassknecht is talking about post war, which is making me wonder if there's so much pre-war food lying around then why wouldn't people find instruments as well? Same thing with other salvageable technology they could use to make music.
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Ahh, I assumed he meant 1950 + 100 = 2050, which is not too long before the war.

Well, we know Agatha in D.C., and the Lonesome Drifter from Montana, did write new music, even if some of the Lonesome Drifter's songs are just post-war versions of pre-war songs.

I just doubt its high on anyone's priority list given all the other stuff they have to deal with on a daily basis. The northern stretch of America from between Seattle to Minneapolis, as well as the four corners areas in the south west, were nothing but either tribal groups, or real small towns of people barely scrapping by like Tuscon, and the coal mining town the LD came from in Montana. And when it comes to the east coast, they have been having to fight off hordes of super mutants, raiders, feral ghouls, and groups like TALON COMPANY!!!!!! and the Gunners for over 100 years. Few people outside the NCR have the time to sit down and just write new music post war.
 
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Someguy37 said:
MercenarySnake said:
I'm pretty sure Hassknecht is talking about post war, which is making me wonder if there's so much pre-war food lying around then why wouldn't people find instruments as well? Same thing with other salvageable technology they could use to make music.
Click to expand...
Ahh, I assumed he meant 1950 + 100 = 2050, which is not too long before the war.

Well, we know Agatha in D.C., and the Lonesome Drifter from Montana, did write new music, even if some of the Lonesome Drifter's songs are just post-war versions of pre-war songs.

I just doubt its high on anyone's priority list given all the other stuff they have to deal with on a daily basis. The northern stretch of America from between Seattle to Minneapolis, as well as the four corners areas in the south west, were nothing but either tribal groups, or real small towns of people barely scrapping by like Tuscon, and the coal mining town the LD came from in Montana. And when it comes to the east coast, they have been having to fight off hordes of super mutants, raiders, feral ghouls, and groups like TALON COMPANY!!!!!! and the Gunners for over 100 years. Few people outside the NCR have the time to sit down and just write new music post war.
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As an anthropologist I don't buy that for a instance. People always create music, hell most tribal people relay on simple drums, flutes and their mouths. 200 years is a long time.
 
Making music has been around since humans figured out how to bang a stick on a rock.

For the vast majority of people living in a post apoc world, daily survival would be the bulk of their life and forming communities to assist them in surviving, but there is no reason to think that in the evening when you cant really farm or scavenge anymore they couldn't gather around a campfire and knock out a few tunes to pass the hours.

Even if it was just purely a capella, I would expect people to sing together on occasion to ease the boredom, and after a good 200 YEARS of that, somebody might actually write a new song.
 
KillerBee256 said:
As an anthropologist I don't buy that for a instance. People always create music, hell most tribal people relay on simple drums, flutes and their mouths. 200 years is a long time.
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That's exactly what I was thinking, even modern tribal people living deep in the Amazon or the African savanna that still live directly off the land with little or no agriculture create music.
 
In a world literally overflowing with leftover holotapes and in which a bunch of people seem to have pipboys, it's a real stretch to imagine that they couldn't record SOMETHING to play on the radio. Even if it sucked, a folk tune that everyone in the wasteland knew from singing around the campfire would be worth playing on the radio station explicitly meant for those people.
 
whirlingdervish said:
In a world literally overflowing with leftover holotapes and in which a bunch of people seem to have pipboys, it's a real stretch to imagine that they couldn't record SOMETHING to play on the radio. Even if it sucked, a folk tune that everyone in the wasteland knew from singing around the campfire would be worth playing on the radio station explicitly meant for those people.
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To be fair that one chick at the bar in goodneighbor's songs play on the radio in FO4, and apparently the folk songs in NV (Streets of New Reno, New Vegas Valley, Home on the Wastes) were supposed to be played on the radio
 
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