Music Review – “Carbon Silicon”

Carbon Silicon is a band formed by Mick Jones of the Clash and Tony James of Generation X. I’m a huge fan of the Clash – they’re by far my favorite band, so I was really interested to hear Mick Jones had a new project.

I was more of Joe Strummer fan than a Mick Jones fan, so, I wasn’t exactly expecting to hear music that sounds like my favorite Clash songs. Carbon Silicon doesn’t sound like the Clash, exactly; they’re more of a rock band without the reggae/ska elements that Joe Strummer and Paul Simonin brought to the group. They do sound a lot like the Clash songs that Mick wrote – I’m thinking about rock tunes like Train in Vain, Lost in the Supermarket and Stay Free. Mick writes and sings all the songs for Carbon Silicon; Tony James is involved, but this is mainly a Mick Jones led band. Many of C/S’ songs have a strong populist message that the Clash was so famous for. It’s good to hear Mick staying true to his roots.

If you love the Clash like I do, do yourself a favor and check out Carbon Silicon. This is the closest thing to the Clash I’ve heard yet — even Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros didn’t get as close to the Clash sound as C/S does. That’s saying a lot coming from me, because I’m such a huge Joe Strummer fan (RIP Joe).

C/S has released all of their music for free downloading on their website. The only problem is they take down older music periodically in order to emphasize their newer stuff, and I’m having a hard time finding their older stuff. If anyone has those .mp3’s, particularly ATOM or The Western Front, can you please email me? They’ll also be playing at the 9:30 club on Sunday, April 6th.

Update: A few more C/S songs on their myspace page.

Update: One more free C/S song here

Did anyone go to the show at the 9:30 club last night? If so, write a review! I’d love to hear about it. I’m also interested to know if they played any Clash songs.

~ by r3run on March 25, 2008.