A Nike Poster Upsets Fans of the Punk Rock Band Minor Threat in a Major Way

By ROBERT LEVINE

By now, music fans are used to seeing and hearing their idols promote an astonishing array of products: even Bob Dylan made a pitch for Victoria's Secret.

But fans of the mid-80's hardcore punk band Minor Threat were upset last month when they noticed a strong similarity between one of the band's album covers and a flier and Web ad promoting a "Major Threat" skateboarding tour sponsored by Nike. Minor Threat and Dischord Records, which is co-owned by the band's singer, Ian MacKaye, are known for being anticorporate and suspicious of the mainstream.

Dischord received some e-mail messages expressing disbelief that such an emblem of punk-rock integrity could sell out so completely, while others asked how Nike could steal an image so blatantly.

As it turned out, Nike had not contacted the band before releasing the remixed image, in which someone looking much like the slumped figure on the Minor Threat cover is wearing Nike sneakers. The music site Pitchfork (www.pitchforkmedia.com) published an article taking Nike to task, and days later the company withdrew the offending flier and apologized in a statement it posted on its skateboarding site.

"All of the Nike employees responsible for the creation of the tour flier are fans of both Minor Threat and Dischord records," the statement said. A Nike spokesman said he had no further comment.

Ryan Schreiber, founder and editor in chief of Pitchfork , was willing to give Nike the benefit of the doubt. "Maybe that's the way it happened - it was kids in the skateboarding department," he said. "You don't want to be so cynical to think the whole thing is a ploy."

Mr. Schreiber said Minor Threat was an unlikely corporate mascot. "It has this reputation that's unassailable," he said, both because of its influence on punk rock and the music itself. "It's still some of the noisiest, most mom-and-dad-offending stuff out there."

Alec Bourgeois, a Dischord employee, said Minor Threat and Dischord were still considering their legal options.

"We got inundated with e-mails saying 'Sue Nike,' " he said. "We're flattered by the outrage. I don't think Nike understood that people care so much about this ethos."