Omnivore

Had Big Star signed to a record label that could sell records outside its county and had they toured with ambition, then they might have had a hit single with the power-pop-perfect “September Gurls” and eventually made albums less astonishing than #1 Record and Radio City. Their non-success, instead, led to the scarred and scared Third/Sisters Lovers where Alex Chilton stirred the medics who thought Syd Barrett and Skip Spence had the market on nervous breakdowns cornered. It’s that moment here, when the songs go from the intense but lovely alternate mixes of “Thirteen” and “You Get What You Deserve” to the freaked-out ghosts in the rough mix of “Holocaust,” that it becomes concrete what Chilton put himself through in the name of chasing demons. This soundtrack to the documentary about the greatest band that didn’t achieve commercial success features a demo and alternate mixes of songs that fans have memorized in their sleep. The revelations and plain fun of these mixes, and the inclusion of the acoustic “All We Ever Got from Them Was Pain,” should wake everyone up.