15 Facts About Malcolm Mooney

Malcolm "Desse" Mooney was born on 1944 and is an American singer, poet, and artist, best known as the original vocalist for German krautrock band Can.

In high school Mooney joined a cappella group known as the "Six-Fifths".

Later, Malcolm Mooney moved in with his sister in the Mission Hill district of Boston, where he attended the arts programme at Boston University, striving to become a painter and sculptor.

Hildegard, learning Malcolm Mooney was an aspiring painter, invited him to come to Cologne and make connections with the German art world.

The band was originally known as "Inner Space", but Malcolm Mooney came up with "The Can", later shortened to Can.

Irmin told Ptolemaic Terrascope, Malcolm Mooney arrival "gave the group the last kick toward rock".

Malcolm Mooney recorded enough material with Can to assemble them into their debut album, initially entitled as Prepared To Meet Thy Pnoom.

Various other tracks that Malcolm Mooney recorded with the band during this period appear on the compilation albums Soundtracks and Unlimited Edition.

Malcolm Mooney quit the band and returned to America soon after the recording of Monster Movie, having been told by a psychiatrist that getting away from the chaotic music of Can would be better for his mental health.

The liner notes from the album claim erroneously that Malcolm Mooney suffered a nervous breakdown, shouting "upstairs, downstairs" repeatedly.

Malcolm Mooney reunited with Can in 1986 to record a one-off reunion album, Rite Time.

Malcolm Mooney has released three albums with the San Francisco Bay Area band Tenth Planet, on the first of which, a new version of the song "Father Cannot Yell" from Monster Movie appears.

In 2013, Malcolm Mooney began to collaborate with drummer, songwriter and producer Sean Noonan, along with Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Aram Bajakian, to record Pavees Dance: There's Always the Night.

In 2021, Malcolm Mooney's work was exhibited at Aspen Art Museum in the exhibition Winterfest.

Malcolm Mooney describes the origin of these pieces as developed from an image of kente cloth viewed under a microscope.