Though he was certainly among the best educators I’ve ever known, David Wayne Dobbins (July 27, 1951—September 17, 2024) was more than just my civics teacher in high school. He was the rare kind of teacher, the kind who actually paid attention to his students.
I had a few teachers like this: my band instructor Mr. Anderson might have confiscated a copy of Wizard from me, but he let me borrow his edition of Watchmen, hipped me to William Gibson, and even shared some of his own fantasy and cyberpunk fiction with me—more than a fair deal, ultimately. There was my English teacher, Mr. Fransen, who slipped me Slaughterhouse-Five, a book that wasn’t on the official reading list and had in fact been removed from it after complaints. He told me he wanted a report on it. Without exaggeration, it changed my life, drawing into relief my own burgeoning worldview.
And then there was Dobbins. The school’s resident hippie teacher, he was prone to Foghorn Leghorn impressions and occasionally writing the answers to tests on the whiteboard just to see who was paying attention. If you took his class, he was your favorite teacher. When he noticed me poring over a copy of SPIN one day, he asked about my musical taste. He liked Green Day a lot he explained, and he hadn’t checked out The Flaming Lips yet. When I confessed I actually wasn’t very familiar with Neil Young, one of his favorites, he more than remedied the situation: he showed up with copies of Decade and Ragged Glory for me to borrow the next day. “Maybe don’t play ‘Fuckin’ Up’ in front of your parents,” he said, bemused and shrugging.
How many times did I listen to “Cortez The Killer” that night? It was revelatory, a whole cosmos within a few distorted chords and lumbering rhythms. When I reported back how much it blew my mind, he took things even further and gifted me a copy of Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby, among a few other records he pulled from his own stash. I’d already pilfered some records from my parent’s vinyl remnants—both told me that the copy of Purple Rain belonged to the other—but there wasn’t much in the way of Lou Reed or Neil in my life. Not until Dobbins. My record collection started then, but much more than that.
Yeah, I know that’s the alternate version and definitely not on my copy—but it is a post-VU reunion between Reed and Doug Yule, which warms my heart.
What does it mean to recommend something? It’s easy to look at record collecting, even the kind that doubles as a personal practice of musical autobiography, as a weird fetish, an impulse no doubt connected to the fear of death. To paraphrase Warren Zevon paraphrasing Schopenhauer, “We buy records because we believe we are buying the time to listen to them.”
But still. The desire to share art, and the willingness to be open to what someone wants to share? I have built my life around this kind of exchange. In record stores, at shows, in conversation with co-workers, directly from artists in interviews—I’ve followed so many breadcrumbs over the years, investigating what lights people up, what inspires them, what makes them want to create or proclaim. Sure, I’ve encountered plenty of people who use their record collections and taste to hoist themselves up above others, but more often, I’ve found people who desire actual communication, who relish in the act of passing around ideas, records, books, opinions, movies, art, and cultures.
Mr. Dobbins didn’t have share those records. He didn’t have to screen Wizard of Oz synced to Dark Side of the Moon one afternoon my senior year either. It probably would have been easier for him to not do those things, to not bother. But he did. I remain thankful.
I remember hearing disconcerting news about him a few years back. Sometimes I speak with his son, the songwriter and musician Matt Dobbins, a stalwart member of the Phoenix punk scene. I can hardly imagine how difficult it must have been for the Dobbins family, but I hope that there’s peace now in whatever form.
Thanks, Mr. Dobbins. Rest easy.
Great piece ❤️
Endless gratitude to those who took time to throw me a trail of musical breadcrumbs to follow. Music is the ultimate gift that keeps on giving, like a game of pass the parcel.