BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL WITH THE FREEDOM ORCHESTRA AND THE MAGICK POWERHOUSE OF OZ

The Lucifer Rising Suite

(Ajna Offensive) 4xCD $25.50 (Out-of-stock)

(Ajna Offensive) 4xLP $60.00

At the age of 16, BeauSoleil played guitar for several garage acts, including a brief stint with Arthur Lee and The Grass Roots. (As would prove to be the case throughout his life, BeauSoleil's brief impression was lasting and Lee soon re-christened his band Love, reputedly a winking homage to the young runaway's romantic proclivities.) Bandless but unbroken, BeauSoleil landed in Haight-Ashbury just prior to his 18th birthday. Marching into the thriving psychedelic street revolution, he formed artrock band The Orkustra and began gigging regularly at Be-In events throughout the city. During this time, just months before the onset of the Summer of Love, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger discovered him during a psychedelic arts festival called The Invisible Circus. He immediately cast the handsome musician as the lead man and fallen angel archetype in his latest celluloid ritual, Lucifer Rising. With typical melodramatic pomp, Anger approached him in a parking lot after the festival, declaring, “You are Lucifer!” He agreed to play the part under the condition that he would also compose the film's soundtrack. Caged first in San Quentin and later in Tracy State Prison, BeauSoleil's creative impulses could not be squelched despite his repressive surroundings. With diligence he was able to set up an inmate music program at the latter institution in the early 1970s. Now, for the first time, all the music composed for the soundtrack has been compiled into a single public release. The Lucifer Rising Suite begins with the 1967 version of the soundtrack and continues through a logical sequence of the recordings made in the years spanning 1976-79. With respect to the latter, the original master tapes were mined for music that had not been heard by anyone in nearly three decades. The newly unearthed recordings were then restored, cleaned up and combined with those previously released to make the anthology as complete as possible. With lots of artwork inserts, posters, essay.