Waiting for Henry: decades in the making, Mouth Congress releases its first full-length LP

09 Dec 2021 -

"This is the perfect Xmas gift for people who think they've heard it all," says Paul Bellini of Mouth Congress's new release Waiting for Henry. He then notes, "They haven't."

Pop, punk and glam rock fans went wild when Mouth Congress reunited in 2016 for what then became a return to glorious infamy. While there are singles available to stream on Spotify and Mouth Congress's Bandcamp page, Waiting for Henry is the band's virgin vinyl debut. "Most of the tracks were recorded between 1987 and 1991," says Bellini, "although one song, 'Be My Hole,' comes from our 2016 reunion show." This momentous event has been so long in coming that Bellini has trouble choosing a favourite track. "As a producer, either 'Pepper Pot' or 'Julie Newmar' because of the weird sounds I discovered. As a songwriter, 'Thanks for the Disco.' From the start, we wanted to write honest songs about the gay experience. Is it 'punk' to write songs about cruising a park or bottoming? Isn't that what all pop songs do?"

The 'we' is important. Bellini shares creative and front man duties with Scott Thompson. Between them the duo have an impressive list of credits from comedic to literary (Buddy Babylon, The Fab Columns), legit stage (Beauty and the Beast) to the silver screen (The Case of the Golden Purse, Another Gay Movie), but Mouth Congress's raison d'etre is not so lofty. "Our greatest influence isn't another band," says Bellini. "It's the Kids in the Hall. Their style of creating material - using characters to voice challenging ideas - was a direct influence on how we approached songwriting." 

Bellini and Thompson have had  a long, fruitful and occasionally contentious working and personal relationship. Like many great bands with dual power sources - the Gallagher brothers, Keith and Mick, Waters and Gilmour, Ginger and Posh - the friction can be part of the creative genius. "We avoid tension with a clear division of labour," says Bellini. "Scott knows nothing about music, so I handle the band and all the tech stuff, whereas he takes the lead when it comes to show elements, like the costumes, the set list, and the comedy elements. But yeah, we still fight all the time anyway, usually over the lyrics." 

Photo by Sean Leber

The band's rich history is chronicled in the documentary Mouth Congress, which is getting a rare screening to accompany Waiting for Henry's release. "The documentary is still in limbo," says Bellini. "We aren't very aggressive when it comes to pursuing a release. We're sort of hoping that all the hoopla over the new season of The Kids in the Hall on Amazon Prime starting in January will push distributors into one of those legendary bidding wars." It is either coincidence or the zeitgeist that caused Peter Jackson's Beatle documentary to coincide with Mouth Congress. "As I watched the Beatles documentary, it reminded me of how much I love the process of writing songs, creating arrangements, and recording. And of course, there is nothing Mouth Congress would have loved more than performing on a roof and causing a disturbance. And I'm happy that Yoko is vindicated. I never thought of her as anything but an artistic genius who just happened to marry one of the world's biggest pop stars." Bellini also had a revelation from watching his own past examined in Mouth Congress. "I was cuter than I realized." As a much lesser pop group once sang, "The little girls know."

Of course releasing music in a world where Adele has sucked all the air out of the stratosphere is a risk. It's one Bellini is ready for, "Adele got a lot of attention for her weight loss. It is obvious what I must do." And Mouth Congress's Vegas residency will be more than glittery gowns and melisma. "It would be a chance to experiment. We'd do some shows in complete darkness, some shows entirely backwards, and some shows featuring impersonators singing all our parts. It would be a gigantic fiasco." Bellini further notes that when the time comes for Mouth Congress to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, big names want to do the honour of presenting the award. They plan on "someone completely inappropriate, like Soleil Moon Frye or Kim Jong-Un. We've heard he's a fan."

Bellini won't reveal, though Mouth Congress might, sordid backstage stories, but when asked what a fan needs to get up close and intimate with the band, "The ideal Mouth Congress groupie is male, hot, and willing to do anything. We've since found out however, that this is a mythical creature." All mythical creatures are invited to attend any and all of the celebratory events for the release of Waiting for Henry. "Even after several decades of not doing this, the real magic is how quickly everything still comes together," says Bellini.