Feel The Pain b/w Grown Up Age

Leicester-born brothers Gary “Gaz” Sidwell and Mitch Sidwell had spent time in England around the first explosion of British punk before returning to Ottawa. One night in early 1978, at Alfie’s Pub on Waller Street near Rideau Street, The Bureaucrats began to take shape. Gaz became the band's vocalist and Mitch played rhythm guitar and sang, joined by Joe Frey on lead guitar and vocals, Grant Bucosky, also known as Lamont Porter, on bass, and Wayne Johnson on drums.

The first rehearsals took place in Johnson's basement. The group initially worked through songs by bands they had been hearing from Britain before quickly turning toward their own material. Ottawa offered few opportunities for young musicians playing original electric music at the time. Most established clubs relied on working cover bands, and original groups were often left to house parties, university events and whatever temporary spaces they could find.

An early Bureaucrats appearance came through a friend at Carleton University's School of Architecture. Joe Frey later remembered the show descending into a small riot, with Grant Bucosky's microphone stand at one point sailing into the audience.

A major centre for Ottawa's developing independent music scene became the Rotters Club, located in a basement at Bank and Frank Streets. The club gave original bands a place to perform regularly at a time when few other Ottawa venues were willing to book them. The Bureaucrats became closely associated with the Rotters Club, sharing bills with bands including the Red Squares, The Mods, Cardboard Brains, Vendetta and others who were beginning to establish an audience for original music in the city.

The Bureaucrats were soon drawing audiences of their own. They played repeated engagements at the Rotters Club and later became closely associated with its successor, The 80's Club, appearing at its opening in September 1979 and returning for further shows through the end of the year. Their growing following helped demonstrate that an Ottawa club could successfully present local bands playing their own material.

Running alongside the club activity was Double Helix Productions, which provided local musicians with access to affordable multitrack recording. The Bureaucrats began working at Double Helix Studio during 1978 and 1979. In 1979 they recorded approximately eight original songs there, part of a much larger repertoire developed during their short career.

One of those recordings, ‘Today & Everyday’, appeared on the Ottawa compilation Rot ‘n Role, released by Double Helix as a document of the music surrounding the Rotters Club. The collection also included the Red Squares, Vendetta, Strone, Drastic Measures, Ragnarok and other artists from the Ottawa scene. The album was restored and reissued many years later.

The Bureaucrats also began travelling outside Ottawa. They played Station 10 and the Nelson Hotel in Montreal, and appeared at Toronto venues including The Edge, the Horseshoe Tavern, Larry's Hideaway and the Turning Point. They shared bills with Canadian and international acts including Teenage Head, the Demics, the Payolas, The Members and Bauhaus.

By late 1979 the band was ready to make its own record. In December they entered Passport Studios in Hull, Quebec, where they recorded five songs. From those sessions they selected ‘Feel The Pain’ and ‘Grown Up Age’ for a single.

The record was produced by Red O'Connor and engineered by Quintan Meek, with the band issuing it independently through MP Records as CCL 45-553 in 1980. David Wales, a friend from Carleton University who managed the band, designed the sleeve, with Joe Frey and Gary Sidwell also credited on the original artwork. Wales was not a performing member of the Bureaucrats, but was also involved in the writing of several of their songs.

Approximately 1,000 copies of the single were pressed, although only several hundred picture sleeves were produced. The Bureaucrats handled much of the distribution themselves, selling records at shows and placing copies with independent and underground record stores as they travelled through Ontario and Quebec. The original sleeves were slightly oversized, printed in black on glossy white stock and glued along three sides. The MP Records logo has occasionally been mistaken for VIP Records.

The single also received contemporary radio exposure. During the summer of 1980, ‘Feel The Pain’ appeared in RPM among the Canadian records being programmed by CHEZ-FM in Ottawa.

The band's live schedule remained busy. Three songs, ‘A Question of Sport’, ‘Passion Bastards’ and ‘You Never Wanted Me’, were recorded during a February 1980 performance at Barrymore's Music Hall in Ottawa. Other appearances took the Bureaucrats through university halls, clubs and alternative venues across Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal.

The band continued playing through 1981. On March 3 of that year, the Bureaucrats appeared with Bauhaus at Ottawa's Beacon Arms Hotel. During 1981, Gary and Mitch Sidwell left the group, while the Bureaucrats continued with different personnel for approximately another year. The band finally came to an end in 1982.

During its original existence, the Bureaucrats released only the ‘Feel The Pain’ / ‘Grown Up Age’ single and contributed material to compilations, leaving much of the music they had recorded unheard. The band later estimated that it had written somewhere between twenty and thirty original songs, only part of which had made it onto tape.

That began to change in the late 1990s. Wayne Johnson and Mitch Sidwell returned to the surviving recordings and assembled Roi, a twelve-track collection of the band's studio and live recordings released in 1999. The tapes were remastered by Tracy Holmes at Sound of One Hand Studio.

Roi included ‘Grown Up Age’, ‘The Game’, ‘Bureaucracy’, ‘Today & Everyday’, ‘Frustration’, ‘Girl of Your Dreams’, ‘Now and Then’, ‘She's an American’, ‘Feel The Pain’ and the three Barrymore's recordings, ‘A Question of Sport’, ‘Passion Bastards’ and ‘You Never Wanted Me’.

A larger archival collection followed in 2000 with the self-titled Bureaucrats vinyl LP. The fifteen-track album drew from recordings made at Double Helix Studio, Passport Studio and Barrymore's between 1978 and 1980. It added recordings including ‘As If We Didn't Know’, ‘Vaccination’ and ‘Killing Ground’. The album also preserved the individual songwriting credits, including contributions from Gary Sidwell, Mitch Sidwell and Joe Frey, along with non-performing manager and collaborator David Wales, who shared writing credits on ‘Bureaucracy’, ‘Frustration’, ‘Girl of Your Dreams’ and ‘Feel The Pain’.

The renewed circulation of the recordings brought attention from outside Canada. Original copies of the 1980 single became sought after by collectors, particularly in Japan and Europe. A Japanese edition of ‘Feel The Pain’ / ‘Grown Up Age’ was issued by 1977 Records in the early 2000s.

The musicians themselves also returned to the stage. On July 12, 2001, the Bureaucrats played a reunion concert at Ottawa's Dominion Tavern, their first live appearance together in approximately twenty years. Organized with John Westhaver of Birdman Sound, the performance was a benefit supporting Ottawa's independent music community. Looking back on the band's place in the city's early alternative scene, Wayne Johnson recalled, “I think we helped open up some doors for independent bands here.”

The 1980 single continued to find new audiences. In 2013, Toronto's Ugly Pop Records reissued ‘Feel The Pain’ / ‘Grown Up Age’ as Ugly Pop 035. The Museum of Canadian Music helped promote the reissue. The single appeared again in a picture sleeve, with a limited colour-vinyl pressing of one hundred copies also produced.

The Bureaucrats' recordings continued to appear in collections documenting the first years of Canadian punk and independent music. In 2023, ‘Feel The Pain’ was included on Cherry Red Records' five-CD collection Blank Generation: A Story of U.S./Canadian Punk & Its Aftershocks 1975-1981, more than forty years after the song was recorded at Passport Studios.

-Robert Williston