rare single '74 ' VA VA VA VVVOOOOMMMMM !/SPACE AGE* ' '74
updated May 29th '05
Excert from the upcoming book by NINA ANTONIA on Brett Smiley is below the 2nd picture here ~
the b side 'SPACE AGE' is even better than the a side, go to our download page to hear the whole song , va va va voom,, he also has an unreleased lp from '74 that has been released on cd in aug '03, we added a promo article below sent in by our friend on jul 13th '03, see lp reviews on page 28, accessible from the bottom of page 21......
also see page 15 for a review of SMILEY's single and b side.........
article excert on SMILEY
excert from a promo booklet entitled ' THE PRETTIEST STAR 'sent to us by NINA
( SMILEY atteneded Fairfax High on Melrose ave. in Los Angeles and recalls a vivid memory here )
I elected the N.Y. DOLLS as my symbolic emissaries. They were so fabulously unsettling in their tawdry finery and platform boots; the lovely MARC BOLAN couldn't compete any more. Even ALICE COOPER paled in comparison.................... The DOLLS penchant for wearing women's clothes seemed to worry their critics a great deal. I loved that they were hated and their music seemed unpalatable. Ultimately the N.Y. Dolls understood implicity what it was to be alienated and they became my funny valentines, especially their ravenhaired lead guitarist JOHNNY THUNDERS. If I put their picture up in my room it risked being raked to tatters by Wanda, so I took one into school, and stuck it under the lid of my desk. There it languished, my secret guiding light in a cruel world, until the day it was spotted by a roving Rabbi when I took an excercise book out of my desk. His curiousity drew the interest of the kids in my class who also peered at the upturned lid of my desk. The picture of the band in their straight-baiting semi-transvestite glory provoked howls of derision, mainly from the boys who had pledged their soul to Black Sabbath. persih the thought that 'Sabbath' looked in any way wierd.
Rabbi LEVY's request that I remove the picture and the idiot chorus of my classmates made me revere the N.Y. DOLLS all the more and I began to further exalt in the role of the outsider. Who wanted to run with the pack when the unguarded perimeters were obviously the place to be ? In this social no-man's land I struck up a friendship with a kid called JIMMY SLATTERY who always had a crumpled picture of DAVID BOWIE, in the guise of ZIGGY STARDUST, on his person.
sound interesting don' t u think ? order your copy of ' THE PRETTIEST STAR ' on 70s Glam * BRETT SMILEY today at this link ~
now if we can make a comment if we may,.......naturally music fans who were and are into black sabbath ( one of the worst pieces of crap rock bands ever ) obviously have very low iq's and would naturally harbor prejudiced feelings against anyone who looked or acted different from the norm, we at the 70s invasion can relate because back when we were in high school we too were sometimes victims of prejudice because of our professed love of punk rock, who were the ones who did not understand our interest and look ? mainly low iq black sabbath fans just like several yrs before in the 70s, as well as some jocks, metal , and pop fans, and boring conservative people in general, getting back to black sabbath, back in high school and afterwards we used to make fun of ozzy and this band of no talents as many fans of punk and 'different' music did, ever hear one of their songs ?
black sabbath = CRAP,
long live GLAM and PUNK ROCK.
- RPM 267
"He was, to put it bluntly, beautiful. Pouting,blonde and so pretty in pink, 19 year old Brett Smiley exploded out of British TV one evening in fall 1974 , and if the country had not already been deeply in love with glam rock, he would have started it off there and then. At a time when David Bowie was still most people's vision of androgynous perfection ,Smiley made Ziggy look like a bricklayer ."
Dave Thompson ,Goldmine ,1996
Some things are worth waiting for. On August 25th, 2003, RPM are releasing Brett Smiley’s legendary ‘lost’ album ‘Breathlessly Brett’, which should have seen the light of day in 1974. Produced by Brett’s infamous manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, who discovered the Rolling Stones, ‘Breathlessly Brett’ has acquired mythic status over the past 3 decades, as has the enigmatic Mr. Smiley.
A former child star, Brett Smiley first garnered public acclaim playing the title role in the musical ‘Oliver!’ on Broadway. For several years, he shared the spotlight with Monkee to be, Davy Jones, who had landed the part of the Artful Dodger. When the production eventually closed, Brett continued to work in theatre and also appeared in several television commercials but the lure of rock and roll soon beckoned.
Like Andrew Loog Oldham, Brett’s first mentor, promoter Russ Gibb had a certain notoriety, having been pivotal to the ‘Paul McCartney Is Dead’ hoax, which rocked the music world in 1969. Twelve months later, Gibb began nurturing 16- year -old Brett’s career. However, while Brett was hanging out in Gibb’s hometown of Detroit, he was introduced to Andrew Loog Oldham, who promised he would get him a deal. Brett Smiley was a perfect package; not only was he beautiful, he was also a uniquely gifted singer/songwriter, and on the strength of a Polaroid and a demo cassette, Oldham got him signed to Anchor records in the U.K, for a cool $100,000.
Recording commenced on ‘Breathlessly Brett’ in Nashville and then New York in 1973. Although the album was Brett’s debut, it also marked a critical point in Andrew Loog Oldham’s trajectory, whose personality is writ large over the project. Partially inspired by Phil Spector’s grandiose productions, Oldham sought to create a luscious soundtrack around Brett Smiley that invoked Hollywood and Broadway, as well as rock and roll. A top team of session players were enlisted, including pianist Ken Ascher, guitarist David Spinozza and drummer Jim Keltner, who had all worked with John Lennon, plus Frank Sinatra’s musical director Don Costa, whilst Steve Marriott contributed lead guitar on the single track ‘Va Va Va Voom’.
To coincide with the launch of ‘Va Va Va Voom’ b/w ‘Space Ace’ Brett and Andrew swanned into London in the autumn of 1974. Anchor’s publicity machine began revving up with a massive poster campaign. Radio Luxembourg championed the single, Disc magazine proclaimed Brett to be ‘The Most Beautiful Boy In The World’, and an incredible performance on the Russell Harty TV show followed. Alas, the distribution of the 45 was fudged and Brett Smiley slipped through the cracks of an uncaring record industry. ‘Breathlessly Brett’ was never released, and Andrew Loog Oldham exited, leaving an anguished Brett to rock and roll exile. Smiley returned to America, where he appeared in several films, including the soft porn musical ‘The Other Cinderella’ ‘American Gigolo’ and a TV movie ‘Suzanne, The Hunted Woman.’
Despite spending some time on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Brett Smiley stayed true to his love of music and formed a band ‘The Vice ’ who gigged around New York. In the 1980’s, he briefly hooked up with Andrew Loog Oldham again, to record some demos. His songs were as good as they’d always been. They still are. Brett Smiley continues to write, record and perform, and on August 11th, he will be playing Upstairs at the Garage, in London.
rare magazine , with Brett, also has the Who and Peter Shelley,
ACCORDING TO PRABHUPADA, AND MILLIONS OF OTHERS THE MOON MISSION OF '69 WAS A HOAX, READ THIS ARTICLE...
Did man really walk on the Moon ???
Did man really walk on the Moon or was it the ultimate camera trick, asks David Milne? The greater lunar lie In the early hours of May 16, 1990, after a week spent watching old video footage of man on the Moon, a thought was turning into an obsession in the mind of Ralph Rene.
"How can the flag be fluttering," the 47 year old American kept asking himself, "when there's no wind on the atmosphere free Moon?" That moment was to be the beginning of an incredible Space odyssey for the self- taught engineer from New Jersey. He started investigating the Apollo Moon landings, scouring every NASA film, photo and report with a growing sense of wonder, until finally reaching an awesome conclusion: America had never put a man on the Moon. The giant leap for mankind was fake.
It is of course the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. But Rene has now put all his findings into a startling book entitled NASA Mooned America. Published by himself, it's being sold by mail order - and is a compelling read. The story lifts off in 1961 with Russia firing Yuri Gagarin into space, leaving a panicked America trailing in the space race.
At an emergency meeting of Congress, President Kennedy proposed the ultimate face saver, put a man on the Moon. With an impassioned speech he secured the plan an unbelievable 40 billion dollars. And so, says Rene (and a growing number of astro-physicists are beginning to agree with him), the great Moon hoax was born.
Between 1969 and 1972, seven Apollo ships headed to the Moon. Six claim to have made it, with the ill fated Apollo 13 - whose oxygen tanks apparently exploded halfway - being the only casualties.
But with the exception of the known rocks, which could have been easily mocked up in a lab, the photographs and film footage are the only proof that the Eagle ever landed. And Rene believes they're fake. For a start, he says, the TV footage was hopeless. The world tuned in to watch what looked like two blurred white ghosts gambol threw rocks and dust. Part of the reason for the low quality was that, strangely, NASA provided no direct link up. So networks actually had to film "man's greatest achievement" from a TV screen in Houston -a deliberate ploy, says Rene, so that nobody could properly examine it.
By contrast, the still photos were stunning. Yet that's just the problem. The astronauts took thousands of pictures, each one perfectly exposed and sharply focused. Not one was badly composed or even blurred. As Rene points out, that's not all:
The shadows could only have been created with multiple light sources and, in particular, powerful spotlights. But the only light source on the Moon was the sun. The American flag and the words "United States" are always brightly lit, even when everything around is in shadow. Not one still picture matches the film footage, yet NASA claims both were shot at the same time. The pictures are so perfect, each one would have taken a slick advertising agency hours to put them together. But the astronauts managed it repeatedly. David Persey believes the mistakes were deliberate, left there by "whistle blowers", who were keen for the truth to one day get out. If Persey is right and the pictures are fake, then we've only NASA's word that man ever went to the Moon. And, asks Rene, why would anyone fake pictures of an event that actually happened?
The questions don't stop there. Outer space is awash with deadly radiation that emanates from solar flares firing out from the sun. Standard astronauts orbiting earth in near space, like those who recently fixed the Hubble telescope, are protected by the earth's Van Allen belt. But the Moon is to 240,000 miles distant, way outside this safe band. And, during the Apollo flights, astronomical data shows there were no less than 1,485 such flares.
"They should have been fried," says Rene. Furthermore, every Apollo mission before number 11 (the first to the Moon) was plagued with around 20,000 defects a-piece. Yet, with the exception of Apollo 13, NASA claims there wasn't one major technical problem on any of their Moon missions. Just one effect could have blown the whole thing. "The odds against these are so unlikely that God must have been the co-pilot," says Rene. Several years after NASA claimed its first Moon landing, Buzz Aldrin "the second man on the Moon" - was asked at a banquet what it felt like to step on to the lunar surface.
Aldrin staggered to his feet and left the room crying uncontrollably. It would not be the last time he did this. "It strikes me he's suffering from trying to live out a very big lie," says Rene. Aldrin may also fear for his life. Virgil Grissom, a NASA astronaut who baited the Apollo program, was due to pilot Apollo 1 as part of the landings build up. In January 1967, he hung a lemon on his Apollo capsule (in the US, unroadworthy cars are called lemons) and told his wife Betty: "if there is ever a serious accident in the space program, it's likely to be me."
Nobody knows what fuelled his fears, but by the end of the month he and his two co- pilots were dead, burnt to death during a test run when their capsule, pumped full of high pressure pure oxygen, exploded. Scientists couldn't believe NASA's carelessness - even a chemistry student in high school knows high pressure oxygen is extremely explosive. In fact, before the first manned Apollo fight even cleared the launch pad, a total of 11 would be astronauts were dead. Apart from the three who were incinerated, seven died in plane crashes and one in a car smash. Now this is a spectacular accident rate.
"One wonders if these 'accidents' weren't NASA's way of correcting mistakes," says Rene. "Of saying that some of these men didn't have the sort of 'right stuff' they were looking for." NASA won't respond to any of these claims, their press office will only say that the Moon landings happened and the pictures are real. But a NASA public affairs officer called Julian Scheer once delighted 200 guests at a private party with footage of astronauts apparently on a landscape. It had been made on a mission film set and was identical to what NASA claimed was they real lunar landscape.
"The purpose of this film," Scheer told the enthralled group, "is to indicate that you really can fake things on the ground, almost to the point of deception." He then invited his audience to "come to your own decision about whether or not man actually did walk on the Moon". A sudden attack of honesty? You bet, says Rene, who claims the only real thing about the Apollo missions were the lift offs. The astronauts simply have to be on board, he says, in case the rocket exploded. "It was the easiest way to ensure NASA wasn't left with three astronauts who ought to be dead," he claims, adding that they came down a day or so later, out of the public eye (global surveillance wasn't what it is now) and into the safe hands of NASA officials, who whisked them off to prepare for the big day a week later.
And now NASA is planning another giant step - project Outreach, a 1 trillion dollar manned mission to Mars. "Think what they'll be able to mock up with today's computer graphics," says Rene Chillingly. "Special effects was in its infancy in the 60s. This time round will have no way of determining the truth." Space oddities *Apollo 14 astronaut Allen Shepard played golf on the Moon. In front of a worldwide TV audience, Mission Control teased him about slicing the ball to the right. Yet a slice is caused by uneven air flow over the ball. The Moon has no atmosphere and no air. * A camera panned upwards to catch Apollo 16's Lunar Lander liftingoff the Moon. Who did the filming? * One NASA picture from Apollo 11 is looking up at Neil Armstrong about to take his giant step for mankind. The photographer must have been lying on the planet surface. If Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, then who took the shot?
The pressure inside a space suit was greater than inside a football. The astronauts should have been puffed out like the Michelin Man, but were seen freely bending their joints. *The Moon landings took place during the Cold War. Why didn't America make a signal on the move that could be seen from earth? The PR would have been phenomenal and it could have been easily done with magnesium flares. Text from pictures in the article show Only two men walked on the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission. Yet the astronaut reflected in the visor has no camera. Who took the shot? The flags shadow goes behind the rock so doesn't match the dark line in the oreground, which looks like a line cord. So the shadow to the lower right of the spaceman must be the flag. Where is his shadow? And why is the flag fluttering? How can the flag be brightly lit when its not facing any light ? And where, in all of these shots, are the stars?
The Lander weighed 17 tons yet the astronauts feet seem to have made a bigger dent in the dust. The powerful booster rocket at the base of the Lunar Lander was fired to slow descent to the moons service. Yet it has left no traces of blasting on the dust underneath. It should have created a small crater, yet the booster looks like it's never been fired.
