Pour your barrels of recordings into the YouTube trough. That’s what the team that oversees and designs the Bob Dylan channel’s many playlists do. Let the loyal fans browse through a hastily thrown together and thinly spread compilation with titles that only cause confusion. And yet, despite all that, this is the easiest way to listen to the earliest Dylan recordings. These additional songs didn’t quite fit into the Bootleg series lineage or were too similar to the existing works. Playlists and compilations like Fixated on death are indispensable for fans who want easy access to rare recordings. Why I heard this lonely whistle And Chimney flash are disposed of here is unknown. What we can say, however, is that they have at least been treated with care.

Just like throwing a collection of books on a bed to look through, the memories this event can evoke are beautiful. Fixated on death consists mostly of early recordings. Very nice of the team to upload them to YouTube, where comments are left by those who think Dylan himself is pulling the strings. The title track is what you would expect from Dylan from this period. Acoustic delights, the rattle and echo of those early works heard while he was still finding a place for his voice. It warbles and races through rugged undertakings, and that, if anything, is why you listen to this effort. Dylan is still finding a voice to carry his material forward. A Howlin’ Wolf cover, Chimney flashhears how he refines his vocal confidence a little more.

Early Dylan works can be enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. Here is the rise of an artist who would leave most of those songs behind. It’s kind of bittersweet to see people like Keep it up, John And Standing on the highway because of the effects they had in the long term. Fixated on death is filled with the spirit of the early years – a chance to hear Dylan at his most exposed, because he had nothing to hide from the limelight. He wasn’t yet on the front pages and in the sights of millions, and so we get to hear him at a serious stage in his career. The death of Emmett Till includes the extra notes, the admission of stealing a Wayne Chandler tune, and the joy of improvising new songs to pay tribute to the greats.

Dylan learned from the best of the lot, and this compilation highlights that well. Dylan’s earliest and best work is chatty, upbeat, and sometimes even cheerful, drawing influence from the grassroots ranks of those hapless forgotten artists who were born just a little too early to be made into megastars like Dylan. Fixated on death will hold a place in the hearts of those who want to hear Dylan explicitly admit that he was inspired by his influences. Did he make those sounds his own? Certainly, and if you listen to people like Steal, steal shows the elegance and unique touch that Dylan brings to the blues classics. And he still does. Rough and violent paths benefits from the same safety and tireless commitment to discovering new routes through old classics as Fixated on death does.

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