[1] He recruited guitarist Guy Florent and bassist Jean-Pierre Brie and, before they settled on calling themselves The Box, the group was known as Checkpoint Charlie.

[3] The band's first single attracted the attention of Montreal radio station CKOI-FM, leading to a deal with Alert Records.

Their shows to promote the album included some dates opening for British prog rock band Marillion on their Canadian tour.

[5] That album, which included backing vocals by Sass Jordan and Marie Carmen, produced the singles "My Dreams of You" and "L'Affaire Dumoutier (Say to Me)".

The latter song, in which Pisapia narrates, rather than singing, a tale of a murder committed by a man with multiple personality disorder, was opposed as a single by the record label due to its unconventional sound, strange subject matter, and bilingual lyric (which required English listeners to understand French if they wanted to understand the full story, including the climactic punchline) but the label relented due to the strength of its cinematic music video, which was constructed as a mid-century European crime thriller film with Pisapia playing the police detective.

[9] Featuring the hit singles "Ordinary People", "Closer Together" and "Crying Out Loud for Love", the album was certified platinum.

[17] Pisapia also later asserted that the nearly two years of constant touring between Closer Together and The Pleasure and the Pain left the band burnt out and exhausted,[3] and he was further annoyed when the label forced the band to appear as an opening act for Sinéad O'Connor's Canadian concert dates to promote I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got in 1990, even though they were already a headlining act in their own right.

[19] This version of The Box was essentially Pisapia backed by session musicians,[17] but the line-up soon coalesced into steady group that had a decidedly more prog-rock orientation than the original incarnation of the band.