As I mentioned before the Village Voice and Frank 151 showcase at Austin Music Hall was one of the best shows at South By Southwest. With headliners Wu-Tang, Fishbone and Yelawolf with a stand out performance by Rocky Business and a surprise performance by Childish Gambino this was the show to beat of the festival.  I took 1100 photos at the event so I am going to be breaking this down into four posts and ten galleries. WuTang and Rocky Business are going to get their own posts and then all the rest of the photos are going to be broken up into two posts, this being the first.

This first post we are going to focus on the party photos and not so much the bands.  I shot a bunch of random crowd shots earlier in the night, but at some point I convinced the bouncers that it was a good idea that I had backstage access despite me not having any legitimate credentials.  So I broke that stuff down into two galleries, crowd shots and backstage photos.  The crowd shots are pretty self explanitory although I guess I should remind you that it was St. Patricks Day which might explain some of the drunks wearing green.  The back stage shots probably require some commentary.

Ultimately I probably should have had backstage credentials since I was working for the Village Voice at their showcase, but my editor told me I couldn’t get them.  Fortunately for me I am pretty good at getting past bouncers and after showing him my Village Voice SXSW badge and pointing up to the big Village Voice banner I was let back stage. I hung out mostly in Rocky Business dressing room and used my access to shoot the bands from on stage. But right before Childish Gambino played I left the back stage area and was told that since the headliners were going on they were kicking everyone out of the back stage area and I couldn’t get back in. Meanwhile I watched someone bribe a bouncer as he was telling me to fuck off.  I quickly ran up two flights and convinced another bouncer to let me onto the VIP side balcony and then I worked my way down to the back stage area.

By this time Childish Gambino AKA comedian Donald Glover was off stage and hanging out. I had met him a day or two earlier because my editor was working on a story on Donald/Childish for the Voice. I took a few photos of him, but while I was setting up he checked out a bunch of my photos on my iPad. He loved the shots and told me he might want to buy one of them. So when I saw him back stage we started talking and I broke out my iPad again. Donald was with his Community co-star Danny Pudi and the two of them just sat there checking out my photos for about 20 minutes.  While they were looking at the photos one of Wu-Tang’s entourage told them he was a big Community fan and brought the back to the Wu-Tang dressing room.  Donald still had my iPad so I went with them.  The whole thing was pretty surreal.  Later I got stuck in a small stairwell for about 10 minutes with Erykah Badu while security tried to lock shit down before Wu-Tang. On top of that Bam Margera was back stage and there was an insane amount of weed being smoked back there. It was a pretty good party back there.

So yeah, you should take a look at all these pictures.  Start by checking out the general crowd shots from the VV Media/Frank 151 SXSW showcase by clicking here. And then if you want to take a look at all the back stage happenings from the party you should probably click here.  And then come back soon for more pics from the event.

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