GRAMMY PARTIES!!! Will.I.Am – Dave Matthews – Neil Young – 1OAK

Yay for Award Season.

by Alyssa Ramos

First and foremost, I’d just like to point out that I’m extremely disappointed that Justin Bieber wasn’t at any Grammy parties last weekend since he had to go be an obnoxious idiot. Actually that was just an obnoxious lie to annoy people…the only thing I’m disappointed about is him being an idiot and thus forcing every single bored, opinionated person in the world to be obnoxious idiots on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It’s almost as annoying as watching Rich Kids of Beverly Hills. “Girls should always wear flip-flops to pool parties instead of wedges, and guys should always wear sneakers.” Hashtag NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. I guess money can’t buy style…just TV shows. Oh and don’t worry, I already started quite the Facebook war by voicing my little opinion..it was me and everyone else versus one old, ugly, weird LA guy who thinks he’s cool because he has money. Guess who won.

What was I talking about? Oh right, Grammy parties. So as you may or may not know, depending on where you live, it is currently “Award Season” in LA, which means gifting suites, red carpet events, and parties galore! The first one that I went to was Neil Young’s Grammy Party last Tuesday, at which, upon arrival I got yelled at by my date for not knowing who Neil Young was. He’s kind of a big deal in ya know…music history, so what I learned was to always Google people before attempting to go to their events…especially when trying to impress a date.  There were three floors of various rooms with different themes, drinks, appetizers, and sponsors, and just about every important music exec, producer, and techie in the industry…not that I could differentiate, I’m just repeating what I was told.

After Neil Young was presented with an award for something (read more on the CBS Local article here), the next special guest that took the stage was Dave Matthews. Now, I never was the type of girl to get into his mellow, swanky, heart-felt tunes…I’m way too much of a realistic, independent, biotch…so it wasn’t exactly insanely exciting to see him, but what was exciting was seeing how wasted he already was while continuing to drink on stage and perform his tribute to Neil Young.

The next event was Will.I.Am‘s Grammy party at Avalon last Thursday in Hollywood, which was also a benefit concert for his charity, “I.Am.Angel Foundation“. As with most things that I impulsively agree to, I wasn’t entirely sure what exactly it was that we were going to, but at least this time I knew who the host was! When we got there, I experienced the typical anxiety of bringing your friends to something that sounds awesome and then watching the “what the f are we doing here” looks on their faces when you look around and see no one you know and have no idea what’s going on (these are two rarities for people in LA).

Anyway, the good news was that it was an open bar, so the slamming of vodka sodas in order to ease the awkwardness commenced. We inhabited a space near the front of the stage and took turns going to the bar to refill our drinks while enjoying the festive Brazilian songs sung by the founder of Bossa Nova and a cameo by Will.I.Am.

We weren’t expecting what came next. Although at first we had some severe #whitegirlproblems and 90’s baby problems trying to figure out if the people singing the familiar rap and hip hop songs were the actual artists, or cover artists,  by the time the third performer, Dougae Fresh came out and started teaching everyone how to Dougae, we figured it out. My freshman year of highschool was flashing before my eyes, heavy bass, beat boxing and all. Other artists that performed were Biz Markie, Bell Biv DiVoe, Busta Ryhmes, Chaka Kahn, and Scarface. The event raised over $2.4 million for underpriveleged students in Will.I.Am’s childhood neighborhood in East Los Angeles (for more info check out The Huffington Post‘s article on the event here).

Since the event ended at midnight, we Ubered over to 1OAK Los Angeles were a few people were talking about going. Since I’m fancy and attended the soft opening last week, I didn’t realize that it was the grand opening to the public and that every person in LA would be trying to go. And they did. It was beyond packed with people trying to experience one of the hottest new clubs in Hollywood. I don’t handle being pushed around well so we made our way up to the VIP tables behind the DJ booth where Jim Carey and Steven Tyler were, but even the cool kid tables were beyond packed with the who’s who of Hollywood.

Ironically the DJ was playing all of the songs that we had just heard live just a few minutes prior. Actually it probably wasn’t irony…they probably knew that everyone from the event would head there after like we did, but it was still funny at the time. What was even funnier was when one of my friends who was blacked out completely ate shit in slow motion. Like she literally looked like she was going to put her glass down on the floor then slowly rolled backwards with the drink spilling on top of her. It was definitely one of those “don’t laugh, don’t laugh” moments, but the good news was that she automatically wanted to leave after that, so I didn’t even have to ride home early by myself for once!