MUSIC | You may not have heard of them, but The Clips are indie up-and-comers. 

The Clips EP look, 2005.

The group is an eclectic foursome composed of drummer and sometimes-violinist Jeremy Gruman, guitarist Mike Jones, digital sound artist and keyboardist Cohen Brown, and keyboardist-vocalist Edo Van Breemen.

The Clips have been working the Vancouver scene for a while, but the band has just started to find its stride.

Van Breemen cites “dance and electronic stuff like UNKLE and Evil Nine,” as well as the Stone Roses, Beta Band, and Radiohead as major influences, (though he was reluctant to admit to those in the mainstream).

“Unfortunately, we don’t have any dramatic addictions or band in-fighting,” Van Breemen says.

Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for that, don’t you think?

For now, it’s just about the music.

The Clips will play Media Club, 695 Cambie St., 604-608-2871, 9 p.m. Tickets $7 at Zulu and Scratch. A version of this piece published in Dose, June 12, 2005 and is shown below.

More music pieces are here.

2018: Notes on The Clips, my clippings, and being canned.

One of the only things I liked about being a “journalist” was being able to promote the work of my friends. My friend MJ was one of the guys in The Clips, and his girlfriend (now wife) Kathryn was one of my closest Vancouver pals.

Sadly, the breakup of my own romantic relationship poisoned that friendship to some extent (though I think we’re okay now), and we’ve been living in different cities for more than a decade now, so we’re not close anymore, but I’m still happy that I was able to do this one little thing for them.

The Clips would go on to put out an album that was reviewed by Pitchfork and The Georgia Straight before disbanding in 2015. I still listen to their album, Matterhorn (available here on Spotify), from time to time.

Journalism is a depressing nightmare for the most part, but little things like this are bright spots for some reason.

Note here the way I’ve been given a sort of byline at the bottom of the piece. And how I’m also listed below that as the person who merely “compiles” listings. When my contract wasn’t renewed (read: I was fired) from Dose in 2005, this exact issue was part of the conflict.

Part of my job was compiling listings regularly.

And each time those listings published, one would be pulled out and given a little more space. Using text from a press release to fill out this longer listing was the standard, yet once in awhile, I would do a little original reporting (as I did in this case, since I was connected to one of the guys in the band).

The decision to include or not include my name or byline was not mine. It was made by editors and copyeditors in Toronto. Again and again, my name would either appear or not based on some mysterious criteria I was never privy to. Then, when Dose wanted to get rid of me, and needed cause, a listing much like this one, that had no original reporting and that used text from a press release, and which also contained my name, was brought forth as evidence that I was a plagiarist. Fun, fair, and frankly, par for the journalistic course.

Published in Dose, June 12, 2005.