Here’s a lost masterpiece blending jazz, funk, blues and soul – and psychedelia – by The Loading Zone, a long-forgotten late-1960s band from San Francisco.

I had never even heard of this band from San Francisco until I read last night in Lenny Kaye’s excellent musical history book Lightning Striking about a formative hippie event called the Trips Festival, staged there in January 1966 by Ken Kesey and his band of drug-crazed followers The Merry Pranksters.

It was a mass celebration of LSD (which was still legal until October that year) where 6,000 people drank punch laced with acid and listened to The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin’s group Big Brother & The Holding Company… and these guys, making their live debut.

The Loading Zone formed in Berkeley and the main player was singer and keyboard player Paul Fauerso, who was previously in a jazz combo called the Tom Paul Trio, the rest of his new group made up by bassist Paul Kridle, drummer George Newcom and two guitarists, Peter Shapiro and Steve Dowler, from a local psych band called The Marbles.

Most of their slender repertoire is what you might call “cosmic R&B.” Their self-titled debut album features a number of soul covers, several performed by a female singer, Linda Tillery who was recruited just before they were signed in 1968, along with tenor saxman Todd Anderson and trombonist Pat O’Hara, to give their debut album an extra dimension.

Tillery certainly did that, channelling Joplin with her full-blown hollerin’ on several of those soul covers, especially a powerful version of Billy Ward & The Dominoes’ obscure song The Bells, emoting for all she’s worth in what sounds like an echo chamber, embellished by psychedelic bluesy guitar and that brass section.

There’s even a slice of Northern Soul when they tackle The Marvelettes’ Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead in fairly straightforwardly stomping style. But they’re at their best when they stretch out, and the stand-out song for me is the nearly-ten-minute instrumental that closes the album.

Can I Dedicate, with Frank Davis on drums in place of Newcom, is a sprawling, slinky groove somewhere between jazz, funk and the blues, featuring jazz-style solo spots for piano, trombone, sax and squealy guitar freak-outs, produced by Rick Jarrard, who knew a thing or two about acid rock after working with another local group, Jefferson Airplane.

It was an unusual fusion for the time, similar to Al Kooper’s in Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Kooper himself would go on to produce Tillery’s 1970 solo album when The Loading Zone broke up following poor reviews for their second album.

Fauerso went on to produce The Beach Boys before turning to new-age music and re-forming The Loading Zone in 2005 to record Blue Flame, their first album in 35 years.