Nu-metal loved masks, monsters, and hype. Snot brought something stranger and somehow more human: a band “mascot” who was a real dog named Dobbs, posed like a circus pro with a lemon on his nose on the cover of Get Some. The joke was loud, punky, and a little gross – which was exactly the point.
Then the punchline turned into a gut-punch. On December 11, 1998, Snot frontman Lynn Strait and Dobbs were killed in a car accident. The band lost its voice, its ringmaster, and its four-legged symbol in the same instant. Wikipedia summarizes the basic facts: Strait died in a crash on Highway 101 near Santa Barbara, California, and Dobbs died with him.
“We are Snot. We get some.”
Lynn Strait, on-stage mantra (commonly attributed in fan accounts)
That swagger, and the way it curdled into grief, is why Snot remains a cult name long after the late-1990s nu-metal boom cooled. This is the story of what happened, why Dobbs mattered more than “album art,” and how Strait Up became one of heavy music’s most unusual and emotionally complicated tributes.
The band that treated a dog like a bandmate
Snot’s appeal was never just downtuned riffs and shouted hooks. It was personality. Strait had the kind of frontman energy that didn’t feel “industry” – more like the ringleader at a chaotic backyard show where anything could happen.
Dobbs wasn’t a marketing gimmick dreamed up in a label office. He became part of the band’s identity, the way some groups have a skull logo or a signature stage prop. When you see that Get Some cover, you’re not reading an aesthetic – you’re meeting the band’s sense of humor.
Fan and discography sites consistently note that Dobbs appears on the Get Some artwork and is tied closely to the band’s image. Last.fm’s band bio references the group’s history and context, including the posthumous tribute era that followed Strait’s death.
Why the lemon mattered
It’s easy to dismiss a dog with a lemon as “random 90s weirdness,” but it also telegraphed something important: Snot refused to present nu-metal as grim cosplay. The lemon shot was playful, anti-macho, and oddly disciplined – it takes training for a dog to hold still like that.
That tension – between brutality and humor – is all over Get Some. The record swings from groove-heavy aggression to moments that feel like a prank pulled at full volume. Wikipedia’s page on Get Some documents the album as Snot’s 1997 debut studio release.
December 11, 1998: the crash and the instant mythology
Strait’s death froze Snot in time. Unlike many bands that fade slowly through lineup changes, Snot’s story gets cut off mid-sentence. Wikipedia’s biography of Strait places his death at age 30 and reiterates that the accident occurred on Highway 101 near Santa Barbara.
The presence of Dobbs in the tragedy intensified the sense of surreal loss. It’s one thing when rock history claims another frontman. It’s another when the band’s living symbol – not a logo, not a prop, but an animal – is gone too.
In heavy music, grief often gets sanitized into “legend.” With Snot, the grief stayed messy because the band’s identity was messy. Strait wasn’t a distant icon; he felt like someone you might have met after a show, sweaty and laughing, talking nonsense and meaning it.
Get Some: what Snot sounded like before the world changed
If you want to understand why the tribute mattered, start with what Strait actually brought to the table. He wasn’t just “a screamer.” His delivery swerved between rhythmic talk-sing, hardcore bark, and oddball comedic timing that gave the band its character.
There’s also a musicianship angle that sometimes gets overlooked when people reduce nu-metal to fashion and angst. The grooves are tight, the stop-start hits are precise, and the arrangements often leave space for the vocal personality to do its damage.
For listeners who prefer a quick, practical map, here’s a cheat sheet of what made Snot stand out in a crowded era:
| Snot element | What it did | Why it still hits |
|---|---|---|
| Humor as attitude | Cut through macho posturing | Feels human, not “brand metal” |
| Groove-first writing | Made songs move, not just crush | Still works in any room, any era |
| Strait’s personality vocals | Turned tracks into scenes | Hard to imitate without sounding fake |
| Dobbs as mascot | Made the band instantly recognizable | Symbol of an unrepeatable moment |
Strait Up: the tribute album that could’ve been a disaster (but wasn’t)
After Strait’s death, Snot’s members finished tracks he’d been working on and invited guest vocalists to complete the songs. That premise has “cash-in” written all over it if handled badly. But when musicians mourn one of their own, the results can be startlingly sincere – even when the lineup reads like a festival poster.
Snot’s official Instagram presence points fans back into the band’s ongoing legacy, including the memorial-era conversation that helped keep the tribute record in circulation.
From a craft standpoint, Strait Up is fascinating because it’s not a simple “various artists” compilation. The instrumentals carry Snot’s DNA, but the voices change the emotional temperature track by track. You can hear different singers grappling with someone else’s band, someone else’s grief, and their own relationship to the scene.
Why the guest-vocalist idea worked
In nu-metal, bands were competitive, but the community was real. Tours, festivals, and label ecosystems forced these groups into each other’s daily lives. When someone dies young, the survivors often feel a duty to turn unfinished work into something that can stand in public.
That’s the provocative part: Strait Up isn’t just an album. It’s a group of famous voices stepping into a hole that cannot be filled, one song at a time. The record becomes a documented failure to resurrect Strait – and that failure is precisely why it feels honest.
Streaming services now catalog Strait Up as Snot’s 2000 tribute-era release, making it easier than ever to hear how the concept plays out end-to-end. Biographical summaries of Strait commonly note his role as the band’s vocalist and the fatal accident that led to the tribute era.
Grief, celebrity, and the ethics of “finishing” someone’s music
Any posthumous completion raises uncomfortable questions. Would Strait have approved of every choice? Would he have wanted certain lyrics reworked, or certain takes scrapped? Those answers are unknowable, and pretending otherwise is how music history becomes propaganda.
But there’s also a reality musicians understand: unfinished recordings don’t automatically become sacred relics. Sometimes the most respectful thing you can do is complete them with care, credit the circumstances, and let listeners feel the rough edges.
Strait Up sits in that uneasy middle. It’s part memorial, part community statement, and part “here’s what we couldn’t let die on a hard drive.” That tension is what makes the album compelling rather than merely sentimental.
Dobbs’ shadow over the project
Most tribute albums are about the person. Snot’s is also about a dog – because Dobbs symbolized the band’s defiant weirdness. The cover image of Get Some still circulates because it compresses an entire scene into one frame: heavy music that didn’t mind being ridiculous.
One reason fans stay attached is that Dobbs prevents the story from becoming a generic “rock tragedy.” It’s too specific, too strange, too real. The band didn’t lose a mascot costume. They lost a living creature that had been made part of the show.
What Snot’s story says about nu-metal (and what it got right)
Nu-metal often gets written off as a shallow era: juvenile lyrics, baggy clothes, and riffs built for mosh pits. That critique isn’t totally wrong, but it misses the best part: the scene was full of bands trying to bend heavy music into something immediate, physical, and unpretentious.
Snot captured that better than most because they didn’t chase dignity. Strait’s charisma made fun feel dangerous and heaviness feel approachable. That combination is rare – and it’s why Get Some still sounds like a band with its own language rather than a copy of a trend.
Archival listings also show how the album continues to be cataloged and preserved as a notable artifact of its era.
How to listen to Snot today (without the nostalgia goggles)
If you’re revisiting Snot after years away, or you’re discovering them through the lore, try this approach:
- Start with the full Get Some album to hear the original chemistry before context changes everything.
- Then play Strait Up front-to-back like a documentary, not a playlist. The emotional arc matters.
- Notice the songwriting continuity – riffs and grooves remain “Snot” even as the voices shift.
- Separate myth from music: the tragedy is real, but the songs have to stand on their own terms.
For a snapshot of how fans and archivists describe the band and its releases, Last.fm’s album page for Get Some provides credits, release framing, and user-driven context.
The legacy: a cult band, a loyal dog, and a scene that still remembers
Snot never got the chance to evolve naturally. That’s part of the allure, but it’s also the loss. Strait’s personality suggested a frontman who could have grown beyond the nu-metal moment, dragging the band into new shapes as the scene shifted.
Yet Snot’s afterlife isn’t just “what might have been.” The tribute album is what actually happened: a community response preserved in recordings. Even basic reference entries underline how central the tribute record is to the band’s story.
If you want the band’s legacy in one image, it’s still Dobbs with the lemon: a moment of calm balance before the chaos returned. Not because it’s cute, but because it’s defiant. Heavy music is allowed to be funny, tender, and brutal all at once – and Snot proved it.
Conclusion: Lynn Strait’s death ended Snot’s original run, but it didn’t erase what made them special. Get Some captured their unfiltered personality, and Strait Up turned grief into a collaborative artifact that still feels risky, raw, and deeply personal. The dog on the cover wasn’t a gimmick; it was a symbol of a band that refused to act “proper,” right up to the end.
