We know Elvis existed as there's impersonators of him. Therefore any Elvis track is canon, as if Elvis wasn't famous/didn't exist there wouldn't be an entire faction of impersonators. As far as year ranges, we honestly have NO idea what the universe was like between the 1960s and about 2030 or so. Big black hole in the lore. For all we know divergence reconverged for a few years. We know the universe diverged gradually, it's still entirely possible that metal existed as it does today and we just can't hear it because of licensing issues. It'd be nice to have some sort of confirmation about what music did back then. Perhaps some posters in a museum? Perhaps Robert Trujillo's guitar is on display in a casino/pawn shop? something like that.
I think it is safe to say that metal, grunge, disco, electronica, etc. never happened in Fallout's universe. This is because the whole reason given for the divergence from our own timeline is that the social revolutions of the late 1950s and 1960s and 1970s never happened in the Fallout universe. There was never a counter-culture movement. Everyone toed the line and supported the Americana ideal of a house with a white picket fence, a working father, a stay-at-home housewife, and 2 kids and a dog. There was never a backlash like what happened in our own timeline. Patriotism stayed high, the kids ate their vegetables and became good citizens rather than pressing back by becoming hippies. The Women's Rights movement of the 1970s never happened.
America continued going to war in places like Korea and Vietnam to battle the "communist" threat, but never lost like in our timeline, because General McArthur likely had his way and started the precedent of using nuclear weapons in conventional warfare. The widespread use and acceptance of nuclear weapons led to accelerated research and development in the nuclear fields, resulting in the advanced development of smaller and more stable fusion generators. The oil and gas shortages still occurred like in our own timeline, but rather than be forced to look for alternative energy sources, upon which research had never started (unlike the green movement in our timeline), in Fallout's universe, they had the ready solution at hand - the fusion generators. America became an near unrivaled super power, because we now controlled the power source to run much of the worlds technology, exporting fusion generators and using them to run our war machine.
China was the only one that could possibly resist, due to their large population. Eventually due to lack of resources, and because war had never failed this America before (thus keeping the patriotic fervor in the country at a fever pitch), America invaded and annexed Canada, which has one of the largest deposits of high-grade uranium in the world. America needed the land for its people, and the uranium to fuel our bombs, machines, and super soldiers for the inevitable expansion of our empire. Enough to pose a now legitimate threat to China, probably the last stronghold of Communism left in Fallout universe. No one knows what happened next, but the world was nuked. Could have been America. Could have been China. Could have been both.
There is even an argument that the Elvis in Fallout's universe is not quite the same as in our own. It is likely Elvis became popular for his gospel music, light pop songs, etc. and never wrote or recorded any of his more controversial (for their time) songs like happened in our own universe. Who knows? Maybe Elvis never even became addicted to drugs and overdosed in the Fallout universe.
Anyway, all this is to say I don't think there is a chance in hell that metal or grunge or anything not easily digestible by the very conservative middle class American family ever happened in the Fallout universe.
» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:51 pm 
