Lar Dawg’s Memories of His First Grammy Awards Show in Los Angelles in 1999

Every year when the Grammy Awards show rolls around, I get all sorts of melon collie as I start to have memories of the various Grammy Awards Shows that I have attended. I've actually been to a few Grammy Award Shows, once at the historic Shrine Auditorium and the other shows at The Staple Center in Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, the 1999 Grammys where my first time attending the Grammys and the last time the show was broadcast from the Historic Auditorium.

My favorite story about my first time at the Grammys was that parking downtown Los Angeles was CRAZY! We have to pay $20 to park at a private home, blocks from The Shrine. Then while on the ride to The Grammy's , some how or another, there was some discussion of whether or not we HAD to ware a tie? We would have been all sorts of mad if we traveled all this way and not been able to enter the building. So to play it save, we rented a tie from the homeowner where we parked, and that was an additional $10 per tie. Come to find out, we did not need the tie. Sure everyday people can go to the show, but we were in a special section for VIP's and we thought the VIP section had to have a tie, but it was not to be, but we did look stylish with a loosen tie and our very cool outfits! (the ticket had Black Tie optional but strongly encouraged, what ever that means)

Some of my favorite memories of the show was just being able to watch a live national televised event, being in LA and at the historic Shrine. This was Ricky Martins big national debut with his hit "La Copa De La Vida". Everyone was talking about him that night and the next day. I was working for a Top 40 station at the time, and I missed Rickeys big debit because I was visiting with Kenny Wayne Shepherd at the bar! (imagine that) Kenny Wayne is a famous Blues Guitarist from Louisiana and I'm the famous Lar Dawg from Louisiana, so we both had some things in common.

I remember some of the big country hits and stars of the time, The Dixie Chicks won a couple of awards as well as Shania Twain and Vince Gill. The show was hosted by Rosie O Donnell.

And of course afterwards, he hit all the Grammy parties that went until the early morning hours, then it was back to the studio for me, as I was broadcasting live from LA back to Louisiana for the morning show, which started at 4AM local time for 6AM Central Time.

The 2014 Grammy Awards Show is tonight, and we'll have complete coverage tomorrow morning with Lar Dawg beginning at 5AM on the Morning Show.