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.