The Rise of High Moon Records

George Baer Wallace and the late J.D. Martignon founded High Moon Records in 2010 as an exclusive outlet for the music they loved most. Martignon, a French record dealer who had previously created Midnight Records—a label and a store— was one of the key players in New York City’s 1980s underground music scene. He passed away in 2016.

“When JD and I were coming up with names for the record label we had a few to consider,” Wallace remembered in a High Moon-centric interview I conducted in 2024. “High Noon Records was one, but it had close associations to a movie of the same name. One other name we discussed was My Flash on You Records, an homage to a song on the debut Love LP.” ~George Wallace

George and JD had a long and expanding wish list of titles that needed to be properly illuminated. Always at the top of that list was Black Beauty, Arthur Lee and Love’s unreleased masterpiece from 1973. Although it had existed as poorly sourced bootlegs for years, High Moon Records’ mission was to finally give the lost record the proper distribution in December 2012 it deserved.

©Harvey Kubernik 2025 via Tracking Angle