SHAWN MAFIA: BLOG MAFIA

Everywhere the shallow and the superfluous speak to us. Their siren calls stream outward from the television set, computer screen and the cellular phone. They have grown like cultures of bacteria on the social networks that hover in cyber space. The new songwriters of our time concern themselves more with popularity contests then with composition. They are the new technological pitchmen that harvest fans through the cold circuitry of My Space and Face book. Their art is sour nutrients for all the bottom base suckers that feed themselves on the feces of the ordinary.Not much thought goes into the wisdom of songs that rehash the same themes and do not expand. Your love songs, the kind of songs that you seem only capable of writing, no nothing about love. They are full of cliché and shallow liaisons not even fit for a flasher and his trench coat. They are much the same as balloons that cannot hold air and never inflate. Thus, oh simple balladeers of today, your songs can never take [...]

Suffering through a John Mayer song is right about up there with being raped by your dad or having a mortician embalm you while your still alive. A lot of screaming and pain. Some tough emotional scarring. You never really are the same afterwards. If you don’t die slowly and painfully from the experience then surly six months with a colostomy bag and years of sleepless nights and nightmares will follow.
A cold jail cell is this John Mayer. His songs sound like sterile tombs for the ordinary. Background music for all those good American middle class citizens waiting in caustic lobbies with bad paintings for a prescription refill of Prozac or whatever anti depression pill keeps them on an even keel. Please be Patient - John Mayer Will Be With You Shortly. This is some serious douchery, folks. Hey John Mayer … I got half of your heart hanging!And that little punk Jason Mraz. Who the fuck does that guy think he is! I caught that episode of LA Ink. That pussy ass tattoo Kat Von [...]

Mirror, mirror on the wallwho is the drunkest of them all?Why that’s me.At least at one time.Now, with glass half fulland the future spreading wings and rising like a sunbathed in the metaphorical juices of mornings promise of beginningI have started a new.I even quit smoking. God I know! Lifting weights in the A.M. helped.Down at gym with the hot tail and the muscle headscan wake you up quicker then a cup of javapoured into the skull of a brutal hangover,but … is it as satisfying?The jury is out for nowandthat is neither here nor thereand the mere mention of me declining a smokeout at the bar has sent some of my rummy buddiesinto a tale spin!I tell them, “I’m fighting hard to get back to it. I buy lighters at the store. And I practice with carrot sticks in the mirror. Just a small hiatus from the nicotine. I’ll be back to it eventually … soon, soon I say!” I promise this in all sincerity.A man has got to have goals.I tell people this for [...]

The Southern California storms have finally moved out after a week of rampage. The desert was ravaged by flash floods. The roads in a tangled mess of dirt and debris. I’ve been rolling around for the last couple weeks with my girl who flew out from Chicago. I haven’t been in such a close proximity relationship for quite sometime. Been living semi alone like some vague sex starved recluse, on and off for a few years. Working a day job to financially support the music job. Chasing the muse and trying to be involved with my daughter that I give money towards and attempt to help raise. I am, in all likelihood, I poor remodel and more of a “fun and games” daddy figure. I do pay my child support though. And I buy the new school shoes. I can’t be all that bad. I keep telling myself that. The problem is I keep trying to believe it.
What I’m really getting at is time. If asked what you would want more of, I think everyone in the civilized world would say … [...]

The new year has blown in. So what for resolutions! Who gives a crap about getting it over the plate anymore. Didn’t need any god damn resolutions this new years. It was already a lock when the guns went off at midnight. All that I was in need of had already been nursed to salvation for the most part. My soul transcended and healed. The new year rang in thousands of new laws and legislations and innumerable hangovers. And really a strange sense that the party has been long over for some time. And we’re all counting down to some strange and horrid post modern prohibition. A radical policing of human behavior. All the great taboos have been dissolved and the bedroom doors are wide open. So now we demonize and hunt down such boogiemen as smoking in a bar or holding a cell phone to your ear while driving.
The sense has been sucked out of the balloon and we are all deflating. The madness has slunk back into the shadows and the sanity is eating us alive. I have given up on bars for [...]