The late ’60s and early ’70s heyday of rock music was unlike anything before or since. While much of the era’s music has been preserved on record, many groovy grooves have slipped through the cracks. That where High Moon Records looks to rediscover and release the period’s overlooked gems.
Co-founder George Baer Wallace made it his mission to put out worthy material from various times and places, and both he and Grammy-nominated reissue specialist Alec Palao have particularly strong connections to the underground West Coast scene. Wallace was inspired to co-found the label in 2010 after releasing Los Angeles–based Arthur Lee & Love’s would-be comeback album, Black Beautyrecorded in 1973 . Wallace and Palao share a deep appreciation for the bohemian romance of the psychedelic San Francisco rock and soul scene that facilitated the rise of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana and so many other artists that went on to deliver classic albums.
GP readers might remember our coverage of the Ace of Cups, a pioneering all-female act that was a popular live attraction during San Francisco’s golden era. High Moon inspired the group to re-form for a proper studio album in 2018 that featured cameos from a who’s who of hippie rock luminaries including Bob Weir, Jorma Kaukonen, David Grisman and Steve Kimock. They followed up with 2020’s Sing Your Dreams. The Ace of Cups story is a heartwarming reminder that rock and roll never forgets.
High Moon has a new string of precious pearls from the Bay on its hands. Top of the bill is a killer live recording of Sly and the Family Stone from just before they got signed and blew up.
High Moon has also gained access to a treasure trove of live recordings from two historic SF venues, the Avalon Ballroom and the Matrix. Some are included on the fabulous new Jeannie Piersol anthology, The Nestas well as on the label’s very latest release featuring underground acid-rock pioneers the Final Solution, Just Like Gold: Live at the Matrix 1966.
Sly and the Family Stone: The First Family — Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967
There’s extra buzz about perhaps the most trailblazing band of the era right now thanks to the documentary Sly Lives! (A.k.a. The Burdon of Black Genius) directed by Roots founder and Oscar-winning filmmaker Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and currently airing on Hulu. High Moon takes listeners back to where it all began with a sonic trip to the spring before the Summer of Love at the Winchester Cathedral, Redwood City, California, on March 26, 1967.
Located just south of San Francisco, Winchester Cathedral was a popular performance space for experimental music and an after-hours hot spot where members of bands from around the Bay Area would gather after gigs. The First Family — Live at the Winchester Cathedral is an incredible early document of Sly and the Family Stone just a few weeks after formation and doing their first residency, which led directly to signing with Epic Records. Talk about a big bang moment!
Rich Romanello, owner of the Winchester and manager of the Family Stone, made the recordings hoping to bottle the energy of the band’s popular after-hours performances. According to an online interview with drummer Greg Errico, they’d get done with a gig at the Winchester and then jam until sunrise.
This treasure on tape has been known about for a couple of decades but went unreleased until Record Store Day, April 12, 2025, when High Moon put out a deluxe limited edition pressed on clear translucent vinyl that comes with a 24-page 15,000-word booklet. Palao wrote the incredibly insightful liner notes and assembled the album that’s getting a wide regular release as well as a CD with extra material in July.
All the classic Family Stone cast is in place for their very first live recording with Sly Stone leading the charge on organ and guitar, Brother Freddie Stone on guitar, trombone and trumpet, Larry Graham thumpin’ and pluckin’ his bass, Greg Errico absolutely crushing the drums, and Jerry Martini and Cynthia Robinson in perfect synch on saxophone and on trumpet, respectively. They all sing like a chorus of soulful angels, and, man, they play their asses off!
Other than the first cut, “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” this is a collection of vintage soul covers. You can easily hear how their arrangement of Lou Courtney’s “Skate Now” will lead them right toward “Dance to the Music,” and how they’ll take the intro from “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and turn it into “You Can Make It If You Try.”
Brother Freddie Stone puts on a clinic for how to make funky mounds of music by pumping dominant-seventh chords all over the neck throughout the set, and he throws in some slinky lead breaks and bends on tunes such as “Show Me.” The most familiar cover is probably “Baby I Need Your Lovin’,” a Holland/Dozier/Holland composition made famous by the Four Tops. The First Family turn it into an eight-minute R&B opus. The group is impossibly tight, and the recording bristles with youthful energy.
On Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967Sly and the First Family take the listener to church in a most positively soulful Haight Street style. It’s downright uplifting.
Jeannie Piersol: The Nest
Jeannie Piersol’s unique voice was vital to the same musical community on the San Francisco Peninsula as Sly Stone, Jerry Garcia and Grace Slick. Piersol was close with Grace and her brother-in-law, guitarist Darby Slick, who famously penned “Somebody to Love,” which was released by the Great Society before Grace left for the Jefferson Airplane and their version became a smash hit. Piersol duetted with Grace in an early incarnation of the Great Society, before forming her own band, the Yellow Brick Road.
After taking a trip to India to study sarod, Darby Slick transformed the Yellow Brick Road into Hair, which like Sly and the Family Stone was a mixed bag both in terms of its multiracial makeup and its mashup of psychedelic and soul music.
Hair’s popularity at clubs including the Matrix let to Piersol getting signed by a Chess Records imprint called Cadet Concept. Slick and Piersol recorded with the venerable Chess stable of musicians in Chicago in 1968, resulting in a blend of rock and soul music with Indian accents.
Piersol’s two singles received airplay but didn’t sell particularly well, which led to her departure from the fertile Bay Area rock scene from whence she came. But she remained on the radar of collectors, and now High Moon has assembled the first anthology of her career, The Nest. The deluxe package comes with a 20-page LP booklet including a heartfelt 7,500-word essay from Palao.
“The Nest” is the first cut, and it’s a deep one. Right off the bat, you get the Indian influence of Slick’s sitar. Then it’s all about Piersol’s distinctly warbling vocal vibrato as she carries the tune for a couple of minutes backed by horns and a group of singers that includes Minnie Riperton of “Lovin’ You” fame. It almost sounds as if Sly and the Family Stone could be the backing band until a fuzzed-out electric guitar solo rips into the mix at about 2:12 and takes the tune into a psychedelic stratosphere for about a half a minute before the fade out takes over.
“Joined in Space” also features the sitar and is more of a slow-burning stick of musical incense full of psychedelic intrigue. “Gladys” sounds like the Jefferson Airplane doing a James Bond theme. “Your Sweet Inner Self” is a stand-out track with a fabulous combination of fuzzy and pristine clean guitar riffs. The Yellow Brick Road’s “Quivering” features a guitar solo full of, well, quivering licks that bring some of Frank Zappa’s early work with the Mothers of Invention to mind.
The FInal Solution: Just Like Gold: Live at the Matrix 1966
High Moon has a cache of unreleased tracks culled from a pair of legendary San Francisco venues: the fabled Avalon Ballroom, which hosted essentially every major San Francisco rock act, and a small but hugely influential night club called the Matrix where the Jefferson Airplane was once the house band.
Just as we were going to press High Moon dropped the Final Solution’s Just Like Gold: Live at the Matrix 1966. The Final Solution was formed in 1965 by guitarist Ernie Fosselius and bassist Bob Knickerbocker, and rounded out by John Chance on drums and John Yager on guitar and vocals. The rather obscure act was filling in at the last minute for what was supposed to be a date with the Great Society.
The first thing that came to my mind when I put on the hypnotic opening track, “Tell Me Again,” was a similarity to “The End” by the Doors, who were likely playing a formative gig on the Sunset Strip around the same time. There are elements of folk combined with a proto-punk aesthetic and trippy tendencies that foreshadow the psychedelic movement. “If You Want” features a crazy guitar solo that does a darn good job of emulating a sitar. According to Palao, Fosselius was playing a homemade instrument.
“He attached a Fender neck to the body of an instrument that looked like a lute, so he was able to achieve those crazy bends,” Palao says. “One might assume he’s using a whammy bar, but he’s not. That’s him playing those bends facilitated by very loose action on the neck. There’s a photo of him holding the instrument in the booklet.”
The Final Solution climbed the ladder high enough to share a bill at the Fillmore with Quicksilver Messenger Service, but they couldn’t land a recording contract and were defunct before the Summer of Love boom was over.
Just Like Gold: Live at the Matrix 1966 marks the first High Moon release in a series of planned recordings from the Matrix, which flourished from 1965 to 1971. High Moon says, “This debut release in the series provides an exciting and instructive listen for any collector or fan interested in the early San Francisco scene, and perfectly complements the 1966 archival live performance from Sons of Adam at the Avalon Ballroom found on Saturday’s Sons: The Complete Recordings 1964–1966.”
“I’m always aware about the concerns of the reissue or never released record world,” co-founder George Baer Wallace says. “That is why the High Moon label has extensive liner notes in the packages with rare and never seen photos. When appropriate there are bonus tracks.”
Palao adds, “I’m very fortunate to work with High Moon because they’re probably the only label currently putting their money where their mouth is in terms of the presentation, the deluxe packaging treatment for these artists that most labels wouldn’t feel are sexy or commercial enough to warrant it.
“The next thing coming is going to be a box set of recordings from the Avalon Ballroom. It will arrive in October to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Family Dog, which is the organization that ran the Avalon.”
For information on these and other releases, visit High Moon Records.
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