To bill this gig only as Carbon/Silicon would be misleading, and even ‘plus special guests’ doesn’t quite do it justice.

Mick Jones refers to it as a ‘scene’ and he’s not far wrong as his band form merely a significant part of the night as a whole amongst live painting, beat poetry, Jon Byrne and support act Taurus Trakker who have their own special guests and provide a masterful example of swamp-tinged classic rock which the compere rightly remarks ‘will be hard to follow.’ But Carbon/Silicon pull it off, they may be more rock than punk than is to be expected of a band that consists of splinters from Generation X and The Clash, but class and craft are apparent in abundance amidst the chaos.

There are traces of former glories; such as the shanking guitar of ‘War on Culture’ and the topical, slyly ironic ‘Fox News,’ but there is no surviving on reputation. C/S’s material is different, unexpected but all with a warm familiarity that comes with Jones’s distinctive intonation and hard beaten riffs.

There was more though: the second in a six week residency finished with a ‘punk’s wet dream’ of an encore, as the Sex Pistols rhythm section (Matlock and Cook) joined in for wonderfully shambolic covers of ‘Twist and Shout’ and ‘Stepping Stone’ that didn’t make the night but were yet another bloody good part of it.
David Ellis