Mates of State "Fraud in the 80's" from Bring It Back Live at Orpheum Stage Door Madison, WI September 22, 2006 PODCAST EXCLUSIVE!

The biggest surprise, to me, about Mates of State selling out the Stage Door was that I wasn't all that surprised by it. How is it that they've gotten so big without it ever seeming weird? Almost exactly a year ago they sold out the Annex, now this, and the next time they come to Madison it'll almost certainly have to be in... the Barrymore. That, of course, means that we probably won't be seeing them again very soon. If that turns out to be the case, they played a pleasantly wide range of material to leave us with. The early part of the set focused on their newest (and in my opinion, weakest) record, Bring It Back. I like this tune, which was the lead single, quite a bit, but some of the stuff that comes later on is a bit dodgy. In the live context, interspersed with just about everything short of their debut 7", it was hard to notice the weak stuff, though.