There is a batch of performers named Robert Griffin, many of them rockers. This one hails from Cleveland and should not be confused with Bob Griffin from Milwaukee, a member of the BoDeans. Griffin of Cleveland can be considered remarkable for how early his entry into the professional music world took place, somewhere between 12 and 14 years of age depending on which pimple-counter is supplying the details. Give a year, take a year, the Dark was a band of teenyboppers whose 1984 recording of the patient I Can Wait has been included in at least one collection of garage rock from Cleveland.

Griffin later collaborated with Doug Enkler and others on the band Prisonshake following a move to St. Louis, additionally a move beyond the garage to more contemporary forms of rock roll. Volume knobs were dialed up louder and the point of reference would be Fugazi, at least if comparisons made by Cleveland rock critics can be taken seriously. Speaking of serious, Griffin eventually started up his own label, Scat. He has both produced and recorded instrumental contributions to the music of a band that calls itself A Bullet for Fidel. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi