This feature is part of Bandcamp Daily’s Slept-On Week, covering records, scenes, and artists we overlooked the first time around. Read more here.
Rock ‘n’ roll is the stuff of legends. It’s the big stages with a booming sound, the trashy glamour, the almost supernatural guitar solos that can transport you to another realm of existence. It’s exciting and fun and at least a little dangerous. But what if someone never reached those big stages? What if they barely made it out of, for example, the DIY and bar circuit of Western Pennsylvania? Does that make them any less of a mythical figure? Listen to any song by Pittsburgh band The Short Dark Strangers & The Shady Motherfuckers, and you’ll realize that the answer to that question is an emphatic no. Lead singer Bobby Porter was a rock ‘n’ roll lifer and that doesn’t change even if you’ve never heard of him before today.
Porter, who died in 2010 from stomach cancer at 59 years old, started playing in bands when he got out of the army back in the early ’70s. Best known were Young Lust, Thin White Line, and finally, Short Dark Strangers, all of them based in and around Pittsburgh and Youngstown, Ohio, about an hour away from each other. Those three bands—and really, everything Porter did musically—ran the gamut from punk to rock ‘n’ roll to soul and back again. Through it all, it’s his voice, a beautiful baritone that’s so very reminiscent of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and other ‘60s soul singers, that rings out so true and bright over everything.
2 x Vinyl LP
Although Porter might have died more than a dozen years ago, his spirit is still very much alive. French label Frog Manchu made sure of that when in 2018, they put out a collection of all the Short Dark Strangers music. The album, a double LP, kicks off with “We’re Not Animals,” an absolute scorcher of a track that also serves as an amazing introduction to the group’s sound. While the band—which at various points included members of numerous classic Pittsburgh punk acts, including Caustic Christ, Submachine, and more—plays a rocking garage riff, Porter’s rich vocals grab you by the throat and don’t let go. “We’re not animals,” he sings, “I won’t put down this book just to pull your plow.”
The discography includes more than two dozen songs and there is so much going on with Porter and his band—both musically and lyrically—that listening to the whole thing front to back is an adventure. While normally it would feel like sonic whiplash to go from a fast hardcore punk track like “Assassins At Work” to the soulful stylings of “Dogs Won’t Hunt” to the funky “Rooftops of the World,” Porter and the rest of Short Dark Strangers make it work.
2 x Vinyl LP
Porter sang about everything from science fiction to racism to war, and his lyrics were poetic and poignant. While a lot of that might be the norm when it comes to punk song subject matter, it’s usually from much more of an outsider’s perspective. But as a Black man born in 1951 who served in the Vietnam War, Porter knew the horrors he was writing about intimately. You can hear that in “Superfluous America” when he compares the American dream to a fairy tale and exclaims repeatedly that “Someone sold you down the road!”
Pittsburgh still mourns Porter. There’s a Facebook group where friends share memories, old songs, pictures, and more. While Porter may have been ill during one of Short Dark Strangers’ final shows in a West Philly basement in May of 2010, less than six months before he passed, you wouldn’t have known it by his performance that night. He had a commanding presence on the mic and spent the set quite literally jumping all over the room, causing chaos and having fun. At that show, he did cartwheels and a back flip, two stage moves he was known for since the ‘80s, and threw in a third Porter original: an a cappella rendition of Reddings’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” a song he’d been singing mid-set since he first started playing in bands.
There is no such thing as a good death, even when it comes to the annals of rock ‘n’ roll. However, being able to pull off one last tour with mortality staring him down certainly puts Porter in legendary territory. He’d accept nothing less.
