About Damdemics

Monster Movie, CAN's, first album was released on the Music Factory label in 1969. Singular in its impact, and name-checked into legend by later giants (Radiohead and Sonic Youth, for a few), the album's title derived from the monogram of CAN's vocalist, lyricist and founding member Malcolm Mooney.

Riffing off the initials M.M., the band hit on monster movies, with their fantastic, otherworldly style. The genre suited CAN's sound, with its mesmerizing percussions, primeval vocals, hypnotic drones and feedback loops—its monstrous grooves.

In the spring of 2020, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Monster Movie, Mooney began working on a series of "monster" drawings to use as posters for a music residency in Brooklyn. Then the residency was cancelled due to COVID-19.

Undaunted, Mooney continued to make the small drawings.  He drew the monsters in groups of six or seven, taping them in a line on the table.  Each drawing began as a circle, drawn on watercolor paper. He imagined his hand as it took over, and drew, without lifting the pen from the paper, in one continuous motion. The monsters were then painted with watercolors.  

That's how the series began, and it ended when Mooney had completed forty small works in total. The "Damdemics" were exhibited at the Aspen Art Museum in the fall and winter of 2020-2021 as part of Winterfest, curated by Saim Demicran, and Nicola Lees.

The title, Damdemics, is a combination of damn and pandemic. In those early days of 2020 it felt to Mooney like the world had spun out-of-control with a grotesque mutation that first infected people individually, and then civil society generally. Finding inspiration in the face of the multiplying monstrosity, Mooney created a small oeuvre filled with levity and wit. The Damdemics are akin to the monsters from the golden age of cinema: not really that scary, but timeless and compelling.

Malcolm Mooney wrote Shelled Creatures in 1963, while in college, before Mooney was fully formed, or had acquired a shell.

Jo Steffens

October 9, 2024