The room › Artists › Bob Dylan
Where to start with Bob Dylan
Start with Ain't No More Cane — The Basement Tapes, 1975. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 34 Bob Dylan tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 14,971 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 34 Bob Dylan tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 34 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The collection leans hard on one record: 24 of the 34 tracks come from The Basement Tapes alone.
The density knob swings 73 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
Ain't No More Cane — The Basement Tapes, 1975. Of the 32 Bob Dylan tracks here that have actually been listened to, this one sits closest to the average of them across the four knobs the room runs on. The other 2 arrived carrying the default for their genre, and averaging a placeholder in would move the centre towards nothing. It is the least surprising thing among the tracks that were read, which is what an entry point should be.
If you want the sparse end
Boots of Spanish Leather - Witmark Demo - 1963 — The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9), 1963. The lowest density reading of any Bob Dylan track in the room (3 out of 100). This is as far towards sparse as the collection goes.
If you want the wall end
Mississippi — Love And Theft, 2001. The highest density reading here, at 76 out of 100 — a 73-point swing across the collection towards wall.
Where Bob Dylan sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Bob Dylan's average coordinates and the range they cover.
| Knob | Average | Range | Low → high |
|---|---|---|---|
| mood | 56 | 31–72 | melancholy → euphoric |
| energy | 49 | 3–72 | ambient → driving |
| density | 46 | 3–76 | sparse → wall |
| head · body | 55 | 28–70 | cerebral → groove |
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| The Basement Tapes | 1975 | 24 |
| New Morning | 1970 | 2 |
| Nashville Skyline | 1969 | 2 |
| Blood On The Tracks | 1975 | 1 |
| Love And Theft | 2001 | 1 |
| The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare And Unreleased) 1961-1991 | 1991 | 1 |
| The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9) | 1963 | 1 |
| Bringing It All Back Home | 1965 | 1 |
| Highway 61 Revisited | 1965 | 1 |
Every Bob Dylan track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Boots of Spanish Leather - Witmark Demo - 1963 | The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9) | 1963 |
| It's All Over Now, Baby Blue | Bringing It All Back Home | 1965 |
| Desolation Row | Highway 61 Revisited | 1965 |
| I Threw It All Away | Nashville Skyline | 1969 |
| Nashville Skyline Rag | Nashville Skyline | 1969 |
| If Not For You | New Morning | 1970 |
| The Man In Me | New Morning | 1970 |
| Tangled up in Blue | Blood On The Tracks | 1975 |
| Ain't No More Cane | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Apple Suckling Tree | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Bessie Smith | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Clothes Line Saga | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Crash on the Levee | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Don't Ya Tell Henry | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Goin' to Acapulco | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Katie's Been Gone | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Lo and Behold! | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Long Distance Operator | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Million Dollar Bash | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Nothing Was Delivered | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Odds and Ends | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Open the Door, Homer | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Orange Juice Blues | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Please, Mrs. Henry | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Ruben Remus | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Tears of Rage | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| This Wheel's On Fire | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Tiny Montgomery | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Too Much of Nothing | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Yazoo Street Scandal | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| You Ain't Goin' Nowhere | The Basement Tapes | 1975 |
| Mama, You Been On My Mind - Studio Outtake - 1964 | The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare And Unreleased) 1961-1991 | 1991 |
| Mississippi | Love And Theft | 2001 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Bob Dylan's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Yuki Saito — city pop, 20 tracks
- Where to start with CASIOPEA — jazz fusion, 13 tracks
- Where to start with PIPER — city pop, 29 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Bob Dylan as a solo artist, from Duluth, the United States and born in 1941. Its contributors tag the artist folk rock, rock, folk and singer-songwriter. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Bob Dylan tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 34, across 9 albums. 34 of them carry a date, running from 1963 to 2001. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. 32 of these 34 tracks have been read that way. The other 2 arrived with the default for their genre and nobody has listened to them yet, so they are left out of the centre, the ends and the spread quoted above.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 34 of these 34 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.