Repost: In Search of Champ

(My post "In Search of Champ" has gotten more feedback, by far, than anything I've ever published on this blog (21 comments to date, compared to the average 1 or 2 tops). I'm glad everybody loves this track as much as me and it's amazing how many people went through the same steps I did to try and find it. Glad I could help.)

The things I'm about to tell you are incriminating. Multiple laws were broken to bring you this mp3 and I'll have to break a few more just to tell you the story of how I found it. I'm talking unauthorized captured screen grabs, illicit insinuations and flagrant violations of copyright laws. But such is my love for you. That I would go all Indiana Jones to rescue this pearl from the vine-covered tomb of anonymity.

I can hardly believe it, but here is the story.

In the summer of 2006 I borrowed the Season 1 boxset of the HBO series Entourage from my girlfriend, who had gotten it as a present from her macho boss. To my surprise, I got hooked. I say surprise because it's sort of a show for meatheads. It follows a posse of mid-twenties dudes living out their fratish fantasies in Hollywood, all childhood friends and all riding the coattails of Vince, the next big movie star. Every episode is a parable without a moral, about excess; of pleasure, testosterone and douchebaggery of every kind.



But that's a surface description because Entourage is smarter than that. And underneath all the weed, whiskey and women is a steady theme of Daoist resignation in the form of the lead character. Vince just takes things as they come, he never strives. He's completely in the gush of the universal stream, his lack of effort the very secret to his success.

It works for Vince anyway, but for the rest of us sometimes a little striving is in order, which brings me back to the subject of my hallowed mp3. In episode 10, "My Mazerati Does 185," all of the entourage bros show up to a slamming LA party - something which happens every fifth scene on the show - and the most phenomenal slice of bump is playing on the loudspeaker; this hoarse croon spouting a clipped lyric over distorted claps and clangy percussion. Half relaxed, half relentless. Most beautifulist thing in the world is how sweet your girl is. Few songs have ever delivered their hook so quickly.

I'm sold and so, being a good consumer, I find the Entourage page on the HBO website and click the link to the list of that episode's music selections.



Simple enough. The song is "Champ" by Mewzic Monsterz. Armed with a title and artist, I figured I was about 8 seconds away from a download. The simplest and most ethical option was iTunes, so that's where I stopped first. But no song matching those coordinates came up; nothing for the artist Mewzic Monsterz; nothing on the album Entourage: Music From and Inspired by the Hit HBO Original Series.

Having been failed by the iTunes juggernaut, I turned to another: Google. The first hit led me to a message board where I read the following post from Boozoo:

July 24, 2006 08:59 PM
Mewzic Monsterz's song "The Champ" ...Can't find the CD or MP3 of this song!! Help This song came on HBO's "Entourage" ep. 10...but I can't find it anywhere! Has anyone found it? Someone, anyone, pleeeease help me find it!

There had been no replies for a week until:

sweetlikeharmony
Aug 2, 2006 02:30 PM
i work in a record store and i checked the band in our database and the cd isn't even avalible, and i tried to find it to download but thats also impossible, i might suggest looking at http://www.mewzicmonsterz.com and contacting them about it.


Boozoo
Aug 3, 2006 06:53 PM
thanks for looking! it's funny, i found that site during my search a few weeks ago, called them and it's always busy. then i emailed, and it bounced back! i even found mewzic monsterz on myspace but it wasn't the same people! looks like this may be the most elusive song in the history of music.

Nothing against Boozoo and Sweetlikeharmony, but I decided not to take their word for it and contact the artist myself. Which led me to the ominous and vague mewzicmonsterz.com. Shrouded in black with a logo in some kind of ninja Klingon font, it looked like a homepage for a video game company, or a drum'n'bass artist. Not whatever next-level soul stirrers had written and performed "Champ."



A loop of far-East techno played while I scanned the various links: discography, television/film, profile. So far so good. Art gallery? Hmmm. I tried picturing the next Pharrell or Al Green having an art gallery. It didn't seem right. When I clicked on any of these links, they took me to a page that said "Coming soon..." (Now two years later, all of these sections are still "coming soon.") I found the contact link and fired off an email to you@mewzicmonsterz.com. It got bounced back, just as sweetlikeharmony had warned.

Having now been shunned by two thirds of the holy trinity of internet culture, I finally took my prayers to MySpace. Sure enough, Mewzic Monsterz had a page, but only one track on their music player - "A MoNsTer" - a kind of half dancehall, half dirty south hip hop. The artist listed next to the song's name was RokstrZ. I started to wonder. What was Mewzic Monsterz, anyway? A production house? A licensing or publishing company?

Totally confused now, but more determined, I sent them a MySace message:

Hi. I love the song "Champ" that was on Entourage. I've been trying to buy it online but haven't had any luck. Is this your song?

About a week letter, I got a three-word reply:

Yep. That's us.

Wow. Talk about cultivating an air of mystery. These guys must really be committed to building a buzz. I sent back:

Oh, great. So how can I buy the song?

I never heard back from Mewzic Monsterz.

At this point I had completely bombed at snagging "Champ" legitimately, and getting my hands dirty with illegal alternatives wasn't even an option. I found this almost impossible to believe. I mean, a series like Entourage must be raking in millions of viewers and music placement on the show is a huge part of its energy and style. They use music that makes the guys and their California nightlife look good. But in turn, those same scenes give the songs an entirely flattering context. As an artist, you couldn't ask for a better commercial for your tunes. How could anybody trying to crack into the business NOT be ready and waiting to capitalize on an opportunity like that? It was unthinkable.

I did some more googling. More frantic message board posts by people looking for the track and getting nothing in the way of information. So I forgot about it.

Flash forward a year and I'm cleaning out my MySpace inbox. I come across my pitiful little exchange with the enigmatic Mewzic Monsterz. I click the link to their page and, lit like God's holy dove, the song "Champ" is up, credited to Jay. I hit play and it's every bit as good as I remembered. The only problem, I do the same searches as a year before - iTunes, the band's dot com - and come up just as empty. I try messaging the group again via MySpace. A week passes. I can see the message has been read, but there's no reply.

This is when I said "Fuck it." Without a tinge of remorse, I used a program I bought called Audio Hijack to rip my own audio file from the MySpace stream of the song. I've been loving on it ever since.

It's been over two years now and Mewzic Monsterz have taken no further steps to make their amazing, high-profile piece of music available for purchase. I don't know whether to scorn or admire them for their Vince-like nonchalance. Either way, the song is a must-have. My version's got a few seconds of silence at the top because of the way I ripped it. And the quality's not going to be the best because it was going through the hideous compression of MySpace's music jukebox. But it'll do for now until the artist, or the show's producers, finally get around to releasing a legit copy. It'll have to.

Mewzic Monsterz/Jay - "Champ"