Carbon/Silicon at the Troubadour on December 3, 2007

Carbon/Silicon is a project created by Mick Jones and Tony James. It marks the third distinct phase in both of their careers. As many people know Jones took a change of pace from The Clash sound with Big Audio Dynamite. James took even a bigger leap from Generation X with the outrageous Sigue Sigue Sputnik (Little known trivia: both Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Big Audio Dynamite were on the soundtrack to 80’s flick Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.) Recently, Jones also produced both of The Libertines albums, as well as the Babyshambles debut. Ex-Big Audio Dynamite bassist Leo Williams and drummer Dominic Greensmith join Jones and James on this tour for Carbon/Silicon’s second album The Last Post. It is hard not to recognize Jones’ distinct voice on the recordings, and live, his infectious smile is even harder to miss. Mick and Tony both played guitars and shared vocal duties.

For fans of The Clash I highly recommend the recent documentary Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. The movie has great early footage of the band as well as the burgeoning London punk scene in the seventies. I missed out on Big Audio Dynamite but I did get to see Strummer with his band The Mescaleros in 1999. Here is a sketchy recording of The Clash from their performance on Saturday Night Live. The first song, “Straight to Hell” (recently sampled by M.I.A. on “Paper Planes”) is sung by Strummer and the second song “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” is sung of course by Jones. Oh yeah, anyone who caught The Good, The Bad & the Queen on their short tour know that Paul Simonon still plays a mean bass.