Caution: it is recommended that you listen to “#1 Record,” Radio City,” “I Am The Cosmos” and “Complete Third” (CD3) before reading this entry to avoid being utterly confused. But then again, you might still be utterly confused anyway. lol

After listening to the Big Star “Third” Sessions I ended up listening to “I Am The Cosmos” for the first time in years.  While doing this, it struck me that many of these tracks were done at the same time as Alex and Jody were recording “Third.”   Both Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were going through a lot of self-doubt and self-destruction about this time.

Though Chis Bell’s music stayed more conventional it seemed on the same disconcerting level as Alex Chilton’s.  Both musicians were recording sessions as such that packaging them into a coherent album was like “herding kittens.”   You can hear the pain and desperation on both musician’s tracks. Alex was all over the place, desperately trying to find a place for himself.  Chris Bell seemed to want vindication and some kind of direction.

If you look at what a great piece of work “# 1 Record” was and the way Radio City ended up, you can glimpse the promise a third album with Chilton /Bell compositions could hold.  Both were too far gone by then but if you listen to them on “You and Your Sister,” (the flip side of the single, “I Am The Cosmos.”) you can’t help but wonder. Chris Bell’s version of “Got Kinda Lost” has more muscle than the Big Star Demo. “Daisy Glaze” really has the depth that could have been a starting block for more ambitious Chilton/Bell compositions.  Chilton’s material on “Third” is rather claustrophobic at times and Bell’s on “Cosmos” sounds more angst ridden.  You can sense both men falling apart on these respective albums but one wonders that if they were able to work again and had a record deal, could they have made something to surpass everything they had ever done?

Of course, we will never know, but it is fascinating to ponder.  Maybe they could have made 2+2=5.  Considering how detailed the recording of “#1 Record” was, would they have found more freedom if they had a record deal and made something completely different?  We are, instead, left with two incomplete albums made at relatively the same time and a lot of questions.  Maybe it’s better that way.  Sometimes the mystery inspires someone else to do something else, to push the envelope a little farther, to come up with something bigger and better or just plain different.  It’s nice to have possibilities . . . .