The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, February 5, 2015 — 3B

MUSIC COLUMN

This song is his song: 

music in ads

As I was walking that ribbon of 

highway

I saw above me that endless sky-

way,

I saw below me that golden val-

ley, I said:

This 
land 

was made for 
you and me

-Woody 

Guthrie

Isn’t 
that 

beautiful? 
Doesn’t 
that 

make 
you 

want to buy a 
Jeep?

Fiat, owner 

of Jeep, certainly hopes so. Its 
marketing department seems to 
know so, actually, seeing as they 
spent over four million dollars to 
beam a cover of that old Woody 
Guthrie song into over 200 million 
American ears last Sunday in the 
middle of the Super Bowl, all while 
showing images of the company’s 
cars driving all over the world. 
North Face had the exact same 
explore-the-world advertisement 
six months ago, set to the same 
Guthrie song (albeit a different 
cover version). I hope it worked. I 
really do. Because if you’re going 
to desecrate a sacred set of lyrics 
in an attempt to improve a brand, 
I really hope at least somebody 
is a little bit richer (and presum-
ably happier) because of it — that a 
small bit of good perhaps came out 
of this act of vandalism.

But let me say this first: Anyone 

who in 2015 still loudly complains 
about bands “selling out” to corpo-
rate interests is simply very stub-
born or very naïve. If I had no fear 
and knew where to look on the 
Internet, I could download all of 
Matt and Kim’s music for free, and 
I can even legally stream all their 
songs on Spotify, a company that 
seems to pay artists pennies even 
for thousands of streams. There’s 
no way Matt and Kim, an indie 
duo in the middle tier of popular-

ity, are raking in cash from tradi-
tional music sales, so I understand 
if they want to add significantly to 
their income by licensing a song 
to Buick, even if it’s then used for 
an annoyingly ubiquitous adver-
tising campaign. It’s relatively 
easy money for people who work 
very hard at their jobs. Artists can 
choose to do whatever they want 
with their art, and any fan who 
tries to claim ownership of a song, 
even if he or she absolutely loves it, 
is missing the point.

Artists do have to be cognizant 

of how their work will come to 
be heard in the public conscious-
ness, however. Los Campesinos! 
is one of my favorite bands, and 
“You! Me! Dancing!” is one of their 
best songs, but I hate that I have 
to think of Budweiser every time 
I hear the first 30 seconds. Same 
with “Walk on the Wild Side” and 
HP computers. Even Bob Dylan 
does advertising now, from bizarre 
Victoria’s Secret ads to “Fuck yeah, 
Detroit!” Chrysler monologues to 
licensing “I Want You” to a Choba-
ni spot. Victoria’s Secret perhaps 
notwithstanding, I don’t think 
Dylan’s legacy has suffered at all 
from advertising. To be honest, it’s 
maybe even increased his visibility 
for a new generation.

Where I start to get uneasy is 

when the original artists are long 
gone and aren’t getting any pay-
ment for their songs. I don’t have 
anything against Jeep — it had a 
cool waterfall at the Detroit Auto 
Show that I really enjoyed when I 
was a little kid — or against North 
Face — its gloves kept me from 
losing fingers to frostbite dur-
ing last weekend’s blizzard — but 
neither of these companies had 
Woody Guthrie’s permission to 
use “This Land is Your Land.” The 
iconic folk singer died in 1967, and 
“This Land is Your Land” is in the 
public domain. While the idea of 
public domain is entirely neces-
sary, and sometimes ads featuring 
long dead songs can reinvigorate a 

legacy, no company should have a 
license to misappropriate artistic 
genius.

When 
Bruce 
Springsteen 

played “This Land is Your Land” 
live, he called it “an angry song.” 
Originally written as a response 
to Irving Berlin’s sleepy, overly 
sentimental “God Bless America,” 
Guthrie’s lyrics reveal his com-
munist leanings: “There was a 
high wall there that tried to stop 
me / A sign was painted said: Pri-
vate Property, / But on the back 
side it didn’t say nothing / This 
land was made for you and me.” 
The result, as Springsteen contin-
ues, is “one of the most beautiful 
songs ever written.”

It seems clear that both Fiat 

and North Face weren’t igno-
rant of this part of the song, but 
rather knew of these lyrics and 
chose to ignore them. The Jeep 
commercial cuts that verse out, 
but the North Face one edits 
the verses, changing “Private 
Property” to “No Trespassing” 
to make the words more com-
mercially rebellious and less 
straight-up socialist. And while 
it may sometimes feel like “This 
Land Is Your Land” is one of 
those songs like, say, “Yankee 
Doodle” — an iconic American 
song that doesn’t really have 
a true author — “This Land Is 
Your Land” was, in fact, written 
by an identifiable person, one of 
the greatest writers of the 20th 
century. To misquote an art-
ist and change his words with-
out his permission, as these 
companies have done in their 
advertisements, is vicious and 
unethical.

But hey, I wouldn’t be pay-

ing attention to these ads if they 
weren’t unethical. So maybe 
they worked.

Theisen is still perplexed by 

Bob Dylan’s Victoria’s Secret 

ad. To help sort him out, 

email ajtheis@umich.edu.

Capturing the art 
of Detroit boxing

University senior 
photographs youth 

boxing gym 

By GRACE HAMILTON

Daily Arts Writer

Names of Detroit students have 

been changed to respect the privacy 
of individuals mentioned.

In order to get to the east side of 

Detroit by 4:30 p.m., Art & Design 
Senior Katie Moran leaves campus 
an hour early, usually returning by 
8 p.m. She makes this trip three 
times a week, averaging between 
10 and 15 hours. With gas prices 
around two dollars, that’s up to 
$40 in gas. Evidently, her schedule 
is unusual for a senior; no four-day 
weekends or wide-open nights for 
early bar trips or Netflix binges.

Instead, Moran spends these 

hours with a camera, 60 students 
between the ages of seven and 18, 
homework and boxing gloves. It 
must be a very unique place that 
can give meaning to such a unique 
combination, you might be think-
ing. Well, “unique” doesn’t even 
cut it. “Magic” might be more 
appropriate.

Welcome to the Downtown 

Youth Boxing Gym, a highlight 
of Detroit. Carlos Sweeny (pretty 
much exclusively known as “Coach 
Khali”) opened the gym eight years 
ago to help other boys and girls in 
his neighborhood avoid facing the 
dangers and struggles that he did 
as a young man. In a city in which 
the high school graduation rate is 
65 percent, Coach Khali’s gym has 
seen nearly every single one of its 
students graduate — 96 percent, to 
be exact. The other four percent 
are employed or in trade school. 
Besides their academic success, 
the entire travel team is nationally 
ranked.

To box in the ring, students 

must first be tutored. Everyone 
who works at the gym — Coach 
Khali, the trainers and tutors — 
are volunteers, including Moran. 
When students come in, they are 
offered one-on-one academic sup-
port and guidance, a free meal and 
training. Boxing is the reward and 
the motivator.

While the gym serves 65 stu-

dents, the waitlist is nearly 400 
students long. As a nonprofit 
organization, the gym runs on 
donations to keep it on its feet. 
Although there is a significant out-
of-pocket cost for maintaining the 
gym, donations have allowed for 
the purchase of a new, larger space 
that they will relocate to soon.

As a senior in the School of Art 

and Design, Moran is required to 
complete a 12-credit Integrated 
Project, or IP, which is essentially 
a yearlong senior thesis. Students 
are provided with two faculty 
advisors, a studio space and little 
else but the instructions “Do what-
ever you want!”

She knew her medium would 

be 
documentary 
photography, 

and she hoped to find a way to tell 
a story about Detroit, something 
that would hit close to home for 
people. Moran’s father had been a 
Golden Gloves boxer growing up 
in a rough neighborhood in Chi-
cago’s South Side, and he inspired 
her with stories about how the 
ring became a place where youths 
could take out their frustra-
tions, instead of on the streets or 
at school. Moran wanted to find 
one of these places. With some 
research, she came across Coach 
Khali’s TEDx talk.

“He talked about the way that 

the gym was a safe haven from all 
the other shit that happens out-
side. Some of these kids have so 
much going on around them and at 
home, and it’s this place that builds 
community. So I went there and 
fell in love immediately,” Moran 
said.

Aside from tutoring, Moran 

takes photographs: of the boxing, 
of the tutor room, of kids with 
their parents, their interactions 
with the coach and of the people 
who are constantly coming in and 
out.

“In my photographs, I’m really 

trying to show the community 
that’s built around this space. In a 
place like Detroit where govern-
ment has failed so many times, it’s 
interesting to see how people come 
together and work together for the 
greater good,” Moran said.

What began as a project about 

boxing and its role in keeping kids 
off the streets of Detroit has come 
to be something else. The project is 
no longer about boxing, although it 
is an important aspect. Instead, it’s 
about the way people support each 
other, regular stories about regu-
lar people doing special things.

“A lot of the things I hear are 

just funny. I was talking to a third 
grader, Will, and we were talk-
ing about birthdays. I told him to 
guess how old I was. He said ‘54?’ I 
finally told him I was going to be 23 
and he goes, ‘I hope my homework 
is right …,’ ” Moran said, laughing.

Other stories come close to 

bringing tears instead. She tells of 

another student whose house was 
damaged in a fire. After a porch 
nearly fell on him one afternoon 
taking out the trash, the family 
moved.

“There are days I come home 

crying. I’ve never experienced 
anything like that. And you can 
tell they’ve never been asked some 
of these questions,” Moran said.

We talked about bubbles: The 

way that Ann Arbor and the Uni-
versity are a bubble. Detroit is a 
bubble, too. With her camera and 
sound recorder in hand, Moran 
floats back and forth between 
these bubbles. Her project is 
intended to break some of these.

“The first time I went, I was 

pulling out in my car and this girl 
taps my window and she asked 
me, ‘Do you think we’re interest-
ing?’ And I said, ‘Yes I really, really 
do.’ She asked why and I just said 
I loved all of the great things hap-
pening here.”

The gallery space will be in 

Detroit, so that the entire gym 
community will have the opportu-
nity to see their story told through 
Moran’s photographs and accom-
panying sound stories.

Moran’s project is a chance to 

show people that Detroit can be 
revived and that people like Coach 
Khali are dedicating their lives to 
doing so. It is equally a chance to 
show these kids the importance of 
their experiences and what is hap-
pening in their homes.

Coach Khali wakes up at 5:00 

a.m. to get to the studio and begin 
organizing for the day. He is on 
call for the remaining hours, often 
picking up students from school. I 
watched the TEDx talk that Moran 
referred to. I think that word “pas-
sion” gets thrown around, but it is 
difficult to mistake when you see 
it.

“We’re doing more than making 

fighters, we’re making good peo-
ple,” Coach Khali says in the video, 
with a casual air of conviction that 
seems impossible to question.

After so many movies and even 

last week’s Super Bowl, it’s inspir-
ing to see what real champions 
look like.

ADAM 

THEISEN

EPISODE REVIEW

Of the 16 original contes-

tants on NBC’s “Celebrity 
Apprentice,” the entrepre-
neurial 
com-

petition 
overseen 
by 
mac-

daddy 
Donald 
Trump, 
only seven 
remain 
after 
this 

week’s epi-
sode. 
Not 

only 
are 

the teams 
shrink-
ing, 
but 

Trump has definitely upped 
the ante: Instead of selling 
pies, contestants now have 
to sell Trump’s luxury Doral-
Miami hotel, while showcas-
ing the resort’s features with 
an interactive model. Judged 

by Trump’s stone-faced sons, 
Team Infinity won the chal-
lenge with their “attention 
to luxury,” while Team Vor-
tex, headed by Kate Gosselin 
(“Kate Plus 8”), didn’t live 
up to Trump’s standards. As 
a result, Gosselin was fired. 
For the second challenge, the 
teams had to captain a boat 
tour around New York City; 

the winning team was deter-
mined by the passengers’ rat-
ings. High expectations were 
held for “Deadliest Catch” 
Captain Sig Hansen, but his 
Hooters-themed party boat 
wasn’t received well by the 
family-friendly 
visitors 
— 

sinking Hansen right out of 
the competition.

-HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK

NBC

A-

‘The 
Celebrity 
Apprentice’

Season 7, 
Episode 5
Mondays 
at 8 p.m.

NBC

SINGLE REVIEW

“The best room they have is 

the last room you want” – what 
an 
interesting, 

possibly 
meta-

phorical lyric. Is 
Modest Mouse 
referring to a 
general and con-
tinuing 
disap-

pointment with 
the unsatisfacto-
ry nature of most 
supposed luxu-
ries that most 
Western 
countries 
contain? 

Or is it another line in a song 
about unhappiness the band 
has decided to deliver through 
the cacophonous vocals of lead 
singer Isaac Brock?

The uneducated, more ran-

dom Modest Mouse fans may 
remain 
unsure. 
The 
other 

patient fans, the ones who have 
waited the long eight years 
since the band’s last album, will 
know that most Modest Mouse 
songs — especially the penulti-
mate ones — carry both a mean-
ing and an awesome indie rock 
beat.

“The Best Room” is a tale 

of typically “Western” mod-
ern concerns that buries the 
beholder until he’s drowning 
in anxiety and exhaustion. 
Or at least I think so. Instru-
mentally, the song holds the 
quintessential Modest Mouse 
sounds that are reminiscent 
of early ’00’s classics like 
“Missed the Boat” or “The 
World At Large.” A strong beat 
supported by longtime band 
drummer 
Jeremiah 
Green 

balances the quick climaxes 
and depressions of the song. 
These fast changes, the heavy 

electric guitar influence and 
confusing yet distinctly mean-
ingful lyricism recreates the 
distinct sound that makes 
Modest Mouse so sonically 
recognizable.

If this newest single is in 

any way indicative of what the 
upcoming album holds, the Seth 
Cohen-ites and indie rockers of 
the millennial generation can 
start to breathe a little more 
deeply, and maybe release some 
of that pent up anxiety that 
eight long years can bring.

-AMELIA ZAK

EPIC

A-

‘The Best 
Room’

Modest 
Mouse

Epic

COURTESY OF DOWNTOWN YOUTH BOXING GYM

Students at Downtown Youth Boxing gym receive tutoring along with training.

