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Mouth Congress began as a dare.Paul Bellini and Scott Thompson's friend Brian Hiltz always had a rock band and dreamed of being Pete Townsend. Having no musical talent, all Paul could do was dream. One day in 1984, Brian rented a beatbox from a local music store. Paul was fascinated by this thing, which played whacky mambo and samba beats. And then Brian dared Paul to start his own band, so he rented that beatbox and set it up in the basement on top of an old freezer in the house where they lived.At the time, Paul's sister Christine, who also lived in the house, was dating Rob Rowatt. He brought over his electric guitar and they jammed in the basement. Then Christine's high school friend Gord Disley came over with his guitar. Later that same week, Scott Thompson came by for a visit, and together they had a massive jam session that yielded about thirty short, ridiculous songs, mostly about genitalia and identity.Pleased with the results, they set out to find a name. At the time, Christine was studying Hinduism and had a copy of the Sir Richard Burton translation of the Kama Sutra. Their eyes fell upon 'mouth congress,' his term for oral S*x. Still in their mid 20s and coming to terms with their homosexuality, Scott and Paul decided that this was the ideal name for their rock band.For a while, they recorded everything on a standard cassette tape recorder with a condenser mic. The results were generally unlistenable, so they upgraded to a Tascam 4-track recorder. Most of the songs on Waiting For Henry were recorded in this fashion, over a period of nine years and in at least nine different Toronto-area houses or apartments. The band's approach to lyrics was unusual. Because Scott was a sketch comedian, he was always inventing new characters. They decided rock'n'roll was the ideal form in which to explore homosexual experiences. They did all the recording and mixing with
