Come to Raw Thought on March 8th (from 9pm-2am) & see Grumpy Green’s super special Psychedelic Chill Room (an immersive space for both dancing & chilling).
DJs include: Melotronix, Tha Spyryt, Ailz, & Cain MacWitish – with visuals by Projekt Seahorse – all at our March 8th Raw Thought at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco! TICKETS
By Lisa Rein
As we begin the interview, Grumpy’s cat, “Freddie Mercury” knocks over some brushes in water in a water bottle all over a piece of beautiful artwork sitting on the living room table.
“It’s okay,” Grumpy says. “I’ve already scanned it.”
Aha! Great opportunity for me: “Hey if that’s garbage to you now would you please sign it and give it to me?” They promise to sign it and let me take it with me. It’s the creature in black, above, at the beginning of this article.)
Lisa Rein: So tell me about your radio show.
Grumpy Green: It’s on S.P.A.Z. radio.
LR: That’s an Internet Station?
GG: Yeah it’s on SPAZ.org, it’s an anarchist collective and they stream radio from Guadalajara, from Portland, from Amsterdam, and from all over the world. Every broadcast comes from a different location. It’s also available via pirate radio in San Francisco, but not yet in Oakland. (Coming soon.) In San Francisco it’s at 103.5.
LR: Awesome. And this will be your first show this Sunday?
GG: Yes! Our show is called #LiveAmmunition and it’s every Sunday from 2pm to 5pm.
LR: Are your shows recorded if folks miss the live ones?
GG: Yes. The next day, at 8am in the archives. (Link to Sunday, Jan 6, 2019 show)
LR: Great! I will link to it!
GG: It’s me (Grumpy) my other friend Traveiza and our other friend Chi Hai. They are all DJs and really incredible artists, and we all bring a little bit different flavor to club music.
We started recently, just in the underground music scene, playing shows together. And we started tag teaming DJ sets. Like we’ll do back to back and each do two songs. We started doing it just for fun a few months ago and we just all worked so well together. This opportunity came up to do the radio show and we decided to do it altogether, and bring on local queer and trans and really give a platform to the Oakland underground scene, specifically the queer underground scene.
LR: Is there an instagram just for the show?
GG: Yes. It’s just the name of our show is “@LiveAmmunition” We also do an advice segment for people that wanna call in.
LR: How did you come up with “Grumpy Green?”
GG: Well my last name is “Green.” And “Grumpy” is something that my ex-partner – I guess my first real relationship – they would always call me “Grumpy,” but as a way to kind of point out when my mental illness was acting up. Because I have Borderline Personality Disorder and I have really intense mood swings, which is why I smoke so much weed, because it really helps me stay like baseline. Otherwise I feel like 50 things a day and I’ll be like crying and then I’ll be like “ha ha ha ha” – just like really crazy. But we would fight a lot, and whenever I’d get upset he would try to be like “da da da, you’re being Grumpy.”
And a while after we broke up and decided I didn’t want to go by my birth name any more, and it started out just for my art. But I don’t go by my birth name ever ever now. Because I feel very dysphoric about it. So it started out as just like a pseudonym for my artwork, but it was sort of a reclamation and acknowledgement of my mood disorder and mental illness, but being like “I’m fucked up, but that is beautiful.”
Read more “Interview with Raw Thought Artist Grumpy Green About Their Life, Love & Art”