THE HARD STUFF


H


E


J.C. HEAVY travelled new roads in post-beat boom Germany. This Mancunian act, led by the bountiful Josephine Massaphia, combined Janis Joplin’s throaty thrills with the funky heavy organ rock grooves of Deep Purple and Iron Butterfly.


AUSTIN MATTHEWS recounts autobahns, strippers and cracking singles A


From the ashes: J. C. Heavy enjoy a smoke


18


quintet of whip-smart Manchester kids ride the autobahn in an old English ambulance, time fractured by a mixture of dope and acid. “Which way’s Hamburg?” says one, “Who cares?” says another as a


drooping reefer is passed around. A lone female voice pipes up cutting the smelly males down into hairy children, “Just get us to the festival in one piece.” The lone woman is Josephine Massaphia, a Judaic Mancunian with a mop of unruly hair like a chimney sweep’s brush and a stare somewhere between 12-inches and 1000 yards. She and her man Neil Levine (guitar) have been over this terrain in years previously, playing German airforce bases for US soldiers. This is a


different time however, and these are very different crowds. Back then the band had two female vocalists (Josephine and Carol – hence the J.C.) but now it’s just Josephine on her own with these four unruly men – though thankfully she can more than hold her own with them. John Hajok on keyboards, John Needham on drums and Kenny Anders on bass make up the five piece. Ex of numerous Manc bands, they had started off life as Hemlock before the name change – at which point their songwriting started to attain a certain sorcery.


The Manchester of music writer’s imaginations is a constantly rainy, dour


metropolis populated by pithy everymen turning the surrounding miserablism into musical gold. But Manchester, like a lot of major cities in the UK in the ’60s, had its own thriving psychedelic scene. Kenny remembers a different time of beat clubs like The Twisted Wheel where he first saw The Small Faces or later psychedelic nightspots like The Magic Village where the band got their first gigs. A lack of good venues prompted a rethink of the band’s career however.


Soon enough J.C. Heavy decided to chase up a connection in Germany – a booking agent in Frankfurt by the name of Peter Hauke. Gigs in Manchester


D


I I A


N


V


I


H S


S


S


F


E


E


A


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100