Silicon Chaps

Mick Jones and Tony James have launched a new musical venture, Carbon/Silicon. Rather than reliving their glory days in The Clash and Sigue Sigue Sputnik, they’re reaching for the future of music-making in the digital age. Sean Egan tries to keep up.

“Wnot do any of your do any of your old material, not recall the brand names that we were recall the brand names that we were associated with before? Can we form a new group that means something in our middle age? I don’t know if it’s gonna work or not…”

So says Tony James of Carbon/Silicon, the new musical venture launched by he and Mick Jones. The project intriguingly constitutes what could be viewed as a full-circle for the pair. Though they respectively made their names with Chelsea/Generation X/Sigue Sigue Sputnik and The Clash/Big Audio Dynamite respectively, the first band of note that either were involved in was The London SS, which legendary ensemble Jones played guitar and James bass in for a period in the mid-70s. That band’s lifespan may have been brief but in retrospect, it almost constitutes the Big Bang of the UK punk scene.

Recalling those more hirsute days of 1974, James explains, “Mick and I had met after Mick had been chucked out of his first group. At that time in London there were no groups like the one we wanted to form. We were running ads every week in the paper looking for people into The Stooges, The MC5, The New York Dolls, and it was like a desert. In those days, you couldn’t even go and buy a pair of sunglasses or a leather jacket – it seems ludicrous – …

by Sean Egan
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