Welcome to the 341st edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday Tuesday (Happy Labor Day!), the first and easiest of September. The winner will receive an MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery clip. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, a hint will be posted. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Reminder: For the first MJM of each month, only folks who have never won an MJM are allowed to answer before the hint. If you have never won an MJM, please answer as a blog comment below. If you have previously won an MJM, but you'd like to submit a guess before the hint, you may do so by PMing me; once the hint has been posted, everyone should answer on the blog. If that's confusing to you, check out the handy decision tree I threw together to help guide you. If you're not sure if you've won before, check in the MJM Results spreadsheet linked below.

Hint: This jam was played at a venue Phish also played this past summer.

Answer: Congrats to @experiencechuck on his second win in the past 97 MJMs – at his current pace, he'll reach the MJM HoF sometime after MJM800! But if he follows in the footsteps of previous multi-MJM winners, his win rate will accelerate and sometime next year he'll hit Lucky Seven. This week's MJM was the 7/3/00 "Runaway Jim," a song that has only been played one other time in a dozen Phish Phish visits to Camden. The hint was twofold: yes, Phish did play Camden this summer as well, but also, the SBD source I used for this week's MJM came from what fans know as the Past Summer Compilation. It always pays to pay attention! MJM342 takes us back to the Monday schedule...

[Recap of last night’s show courtesy of longtime Mockingbird Foundation contributor, jaded vet, and serial ranker @chopaganda.]

Before we begin, I want to thank Steve Paolini for offering me his traditional Sunday Dick’s recap. Steve was one of many fans who thought Curveball would actually happen and missed this year’s Dick’s run in lieu of it. Sucker.

There are two ways we can look at last night’s show. On the one hand, it was incredibly fun, high-energy, and packed with moments that remind us why we love Phish. On the other hand, it was a big step back from Friday night and a somewhat tepid way to end a Summer tour following the cancelation of Curveball.

If we were to break down the Summer 2018 shows into tiers*****, it would look something like this:

Tier 1: Dicks1

Tier 2: Alpharetta1

Tier 3: Gorge3, Alpharetta2, Camden1, Merriweather2, Dicks3

Tier 4: San Francisco1, Alpharetta3, Forum1, Camden2, Dicks2

Tier 5: Gorge1, San Francisco2, Austin, Raleigh, Merriweather1

Tier 6: Tahoe1, Tahoe2, Gorge2, Forum2

*****This is specifically looking at the music that ends up on the recordings. It is not a ranking of good times and crowds going wild (e.g. even though Alpharetta night three was obviously one of the most fun shows of Summer, it’s also one of the weaker shows of Summer in terms of improv and flubs).

So which parts of last night's show (Sunday Dick's) elevated it to Tier 3?

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[Recap of last night's show is courtesy of Dr. Stephanie Jenkins. -Ed.]

Seven years ago today, Phish played their first show at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Colorado.

Do you know what happened then?

My 2011 Dick’s experience was very different than my still unfolding 2018 experience. Since Thursday evening, when I read the JamBase flashback describing how phans responded to the “S show,” I’ve been asking myself “What changed?” and “How did I get here?” It is impossible for me to write a recap of last night’s show without telling you about my “then” and “now” Dick’s experiences, because the ways the venue, community, and my self have transformed over the course of eight Dick’s runs have intimately affected my experience of last night’s show.

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Coming out of the canceled Curveball festival, speculating the plan for the first show of Dick’s has been a hobby for many. They would do rare songs to appease those who missed the festival! The show would spell something with the setlist! [Insert tweeter's/forum member’s/random guy who had seen a few shows' favorite song that they’ve never seen] would be played of course… twice! Others tempered speculation saying that Phish would just play a normal show, and people had to keep their hopes in check for the “Harpua” opener or for the mysterious ball that was the centerpiece of the artwork to somehow appear in Commerce City.

Somehow both groups were wrong. Phish didn’t play anything unusual. Every song had been played already on Summer 2018. Outside of “Cavern,” (somehow not performed since the way distant past of 7/28/18) every song had even been played in one of the 8 previous shows in August. However, despite playing a night where the building blocks were standard, they somehow still manage to confound any normal expectation.

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[Thanks to Brian Crossen, @TypeIIIJPD, for sharing his thoughts on the recent Curveball cancellation and some optimism for what lies ahead - ed.]

As I sit here a few scant days after returning from the Festival That Wasn’t™ (Curventry, Covenball, Lemonadewheel, The Great Wasn’t, Knuckleball, No Ball… whatever you want to call it we sure know how to coin a phrase, huh?) the full weight of what we missed out on continues to weigh on me. The stage was set for another fantastic weekend of music as Phish came in humming after a solid summer tour and the entire community was poised to practically explode with anticipatory excitement at the prospect of another weekend at Watkins Glen. Alas, what we ended up with was decidedly NOT that as many others have documented over the past week. But this post is not about that. Instead, my focus is on looking forward while also reflecting back in an effort to offer perspective on what our long history with this wonderful band can provide at this time.

I, like many many others, am a survivor of both Phish festival weather-related failures. And when I call Coventry a “failure” I mean that personally as much as anything. Without rehashing my own ‘tragic’ tale of woe in never getting close enough to even attempt to walk in to that festival let’s just say that the experience definitely altered my relationship with Phish for several years. Here some fourteen years later we find ourselves in a similar position where the choice to be made is whether to allow this experience to send us back down those dark paths or to go another direction. In the immediate moments after learning of the Curveball cancellation I was transported back to that car on I-91 as Mike came on the Bunny to give us that fateful news, turning some fans into thru-hikers and others such as myself into dejected folks wandering around New England to try to find some other form of closure for the whole thing (spoiler alert: there was no good closure to be found anywhere).

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Welcome to the 340th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the last and most difficult of August. The winner will receive an MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the songs and dates of the three mystery clips, which are connected by a theme that needn't be part of the correct answer. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, a hint will be posted. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to @lostboy01 on his second MJM win, absolutely shredding this week's 'difficult' puzzle by identifying the 5/24/88 "Run Like an Antelope," the 6/21/88 "Whipping Post," and the 7/12/88 "Sneakin' Sally through the Alley" vocal jam. If you've ever wondered what Burlington sounded like in 1988, this MJM's for you! Stay tuned for an easier take on the contest for MJM341 on Tuesday, after the Labor Day Dick's holiday. Safe travels!

We're an optimistic bunch. That's a good thing, as most of us were able to salvage the weekend. However, we've gone way too far the other way. It's almost become a competition to see who can be the most "glass half full" about the event, to the point where I'm expecting a think piece explaining how this was actually the best Phish festival ever because it was so relaxing, and we actually had plenty of time to talk and hang out!

And while that's fine for those who believe it, I'm feeling like it's putting pressure on others to buy into that. Don't do it.

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[Some words from Andrew Sinclair, user @aisincl, who was supposed to recap Curveball's third show for this blog. -Ed.]

Of course it is cloudy, windy and rainy on this Sunday morning. Of course Junior’s Donuts in Margate City, NJ would be serving Coconut, Red Velvet and Twist donuts on yet another 2018 weekend interrupted by Mother Nature.

Emotions are a very interesting thing. I credit Pixar for taking a real risk by tackling emotions when it created Inside Out. We got to know Anger, Sadness, Joy, Disgust and Fear and their involvement in our minds and lives. This weekend certainly brought out all of these characters for some 40,000+ of us. As I did some digging on emotions for this piece, I became focused on the “deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.” This entire weekend, last few years of Phandom and total relationship with The Phish from Vermont can be summed up by the bit on relationships with others.

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Welcome to the 339th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third of August. The winner will receive a MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the songs and dates of the three mystery clips, which are connected by a theme that needn't be part of the correct answer. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, a hint will be posted. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Hint: After Curveball was canceled, I considered rescheduling this week's MJM.

Answer: And then there were 20! With his 7th win since MJM215 (March 2016), @TwiceBitten enters the MJM Hall of Fame as the twentieth MJM Emeritus – after years of playing along, he knew there was no trap in this week's hint and quickly identified the three "make-up" jams from shows or sets that were rescheduled due to forces beyond the band's control: the 7/22/13 "Down with Disease" (making up for the 7/9/13 show that was canceled due to flooding that closed routes to the venue), the 7/20/13 "Golden Age" (with an extra set announced day-of to make up for the storm that cut the second set short the night before), and the 3/16/91 "You Enjoy Myself" (there was supposed to be a show in Breckenridge on 3/14/91 and another in Vail on 3/16/91, but they had to cancel and reschedule and ended up playing Breckenridge 3/16/91 instead). Boy am I glad this sort of stuff doesn't happen anymore! fuck.

@TwiceBitten wins his 7th LivePhish code, which he'll probably give away, and I will be faxing him some papers regarding his other prizes, which include a 5 minute shopping spree with Trey at a Manhattan boutique men's clothing store, a copy of the Curveball secret set rehearsal videos from the spaceship behind the barn, and a crispy iPhone recording of the 8 hours-a-day FTW rehearsals Trey played with members of JRAD (which Scott Metzger mentioned on the most recent episode of Under the Scales). @TwiceBitten now holds the record for most clips identified in wins by any MJMer in history with 23. In fact, the MJM Emeriti have won 44% of the MJMs all time, and have identified more than half the 600+ jams used in those contests. It's as staggering as it is interesting – it sure seems like just when I think we've run out of savants, another steps up and runs the table. Who's next? Stay tuned for MJM340 on Monday, when we turn back the clock a bit and ramp up the difficulty.

I walked off the airplane in Buffalo Thursday afternoon but my feet still hadn’t touched the ground. I floated through the terminal, down an escalator. I passed a stranger, no, a fan, there are no strangers in our little world, going up the escalator.

“See you at the Ball!” he said, and shot me two thumbs up.

“Can’t wait!” I exclaimed. Feet still hadn’t touched the ground.

From the stairs to the left of me, another fan chimes in, “Festival’s canceled, dude.”
“No it isn’t,” I replied.
“It really is though. Because of the flooding.”
“No, it isn’t,” my feet were losing altitude, “and don’t joke around about this stuff.“

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An incredible amount of time, effort, and passion was invested building an experience for Phish's planned Curveball festival this weekend, before it was cancelled. Fan Adam Dyda was on site to capture the eerie, almost Scott Haefner-like quality of the unpopulated environment, and we're honored to be able to share some of his pictures here (17 total), to honor those who worked so hard to make Curveball what it was meant to be.

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This is a game for 2-10 Phish fans, designed to be played on tour – whether passing hours in the lot or in line, meeting new friends at a forum meetup, or post-show fun at a hotel or campground. It’s ideally suited for relaxed banter among casual fans, and could be a great way to help share your particular interests in Phishtory. It’s also well suited for cut-throat “I know this band sooooooooo much better than you” gauntlet throwdowns (once you’re sick of arguing about whether the most recent show was historically uberepic or only subprime millennial epic), if your crew swings that way.

Materials Needed

You’ll need some sort of tokens – coins, poker chips, pencils, Pepperidge Farm baked snack crackers… or maybe Phanart pins, if you want to put your artwork where your mouth is. (Put ‘em in the game, and let ‘em fight it out.) Each player starts with five. These are your “goldfish” and, unlike Jimmy (RIP Poster Nutbag), you do want a goldfish. Every single one of them.

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Beyond the Pond is a bi-weekly podcast in which Brian Brinkman (@sufferingjuke) and David Goldstein (@daveg924) use the music of Phish as a gateway to introduce the listener to many other bands, the vast majority of which are not jambands. An episode generally begins with a deep dive into a designated portion of Phish improvisation, and then can spin off to any variety of musical themes and other acts, the overarching purpose being introducing the listener to as many new and different bands as possible.

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[The following is courtesy of Ryan Harrell. THANK YOU RYAN! -Ed.]

About a year ago, I was enjoying one of the Live Bait releases and began thinking about the somewhat disembodied nature of this series, in which live performances from different years and eras are removed from their context and assembled in a way that simulates a long live set. This effectively presents a broad range of Phish’s archives, for which we are all grateful, but it necessarily loses any sense of the chronology or historical context of a given song in doing so.

Also around this time, I noticed .net users on the forum discussing years and eras of the band underserved by official releases of full shows. As I recall, 1999 and 2000 were particularly high on that list, and I began wondering how much soundboard-quality audio from these years existed in a form let than a full show, but at least one song. Far from simply being a nerdy thought exercise, which it definitely was, I also realized how awesome a playlist from a particular year or tour would be with this data collected and compiled chronologically. Okay, so it still sounds nerdy.

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As fans, I think we sometimes underestimate the vast number of variables that have to align to create a great Phish show. Probably more so now, when everyone is older, travel and logistics are more complicated, the setup is so much more intense, and more.

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