Crowd the Greater Spectacle at Reptar Show

At the risk of estranging myself from the rest of Athens, I'll voice an unpopular opinion: I don't care much for Reptar. 

Dance beats mixed with progressive electronic does nothing for me. The band's manipulated sounds and indie screeches seem more superficial than experimental. And the lyrics could be fantastic tributes to philosophical wisdom, but I can't understand them, so they do me no good.

The reason to go to a Reptar show isn't the band, but the crowd. Reptar knows this. They spend almost as much time singing as they do being tossed around like punky, musical footballs. Reptar fans take "feel the music" to mean something literal. Each time Jace Bartet reached out into the crowd, teeming groupies pulled him in a hundred directions.

So the band becomes an occassional attraction — background noise, even. Stuck inbetween drunk, joyfully girls and boys belting out Disney lyrics, there's really no point in watching the show.  With pig masks, toilet paper streaming through the air and the constant sound of some-table-or-other collapsing under the weight of dancing half-naked men, you have enough entertainment where you're at. 

Even if you're into the music, you have to keep your eye on others. Crowd surfers appear like land mines during some of Reptar's more rambunxious songs. An ill-timed moment of standing still leads to a foot in the face. It's a concert built for the brave, the few, the proud. Those of us without as much fortitude just stand on the sidelines. 

So it goes with Athens music: part of the experience is the band, but most of it is being there. When you're laughing and jostled by a crowd dancing out of sync, entertainment follows regardless of whether the music is good. Maybe that was always Reptar's appeal — a couple of catchy riffs, and arenas filled with caught-up music lovers.