[We would like to thank Cotter, the youngest fan ever to recap a show for this blog, for recapping last night's MPP2 show. -Ed.]

Phish means more to me than nearly any other aspect of my life, so the months leading up to any given show are filled with anticipation. I imagine I’m not alone in this sentiment, but my point of view may be different. Being a diehard Phish fan in high school is one hell of an experience. Be it the incessant checking of this very site in class, or even explaining to people that "no, I’m not in love with a water-dwelling animal, but instead with the magic four middle-aged rock stars produce." This leads to some pretty obnoxious scorns, but shows like last night make it worth it. The 40-minute drive north was chalk full of questions by my family on setlist predictions and song meanings, but that’s really not a problem, as I’ll proudly flaunt whatever knowledge such an obsession leads to. Now to the music.

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Welcome to the 381st edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the fourth and hardest of June. The winner will receive an MP3 download codes 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. The clips are connected by a theme, but the theme 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, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

[This recap is courtesy of Aaron Presuhn (@presuhn). Please note that the opinions expressed in blog posts like this one are not necessarily shared by any of the volunteers who work on Phish.net. -Ed.]

Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s kinda my home venue. I live closer to Star Lake in Burgettstown, but the Phish have ignored that shed for a while now (please come back!). Haven’t missed an MPP show since my first one there in 2000. Quite a few fun shows here!

I went in expecting a downpour because, you know, all it’s done for the past month in the northeast is rain. But we ended up having a beautiful, sunny day. It really felt like summer for the first time this year. Parking was weird, and the police presence was more than I remember from last year. There are assigned lots now, but everyone seems to ignore them. My lot was blocked off anyway, so we just drove around until finding something open.

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[Recap is courtesy of user @jsauce, Josh Martin. Apologies to him and to you that this recap was belatedly posted. Once again, please note that the opinions offered in this recap are not necessarily shared by any of the volunteers on this site. -Ed.]

Greetings and salutations from Charlotte, North Carolina: Place of my birth, my first show (11/19/95), and of course, tonight’s show.

A word about PNC (neé Blockbuster) Pavilion: it’s about as generic a venue as you can imagine. Sprawling outdoor shed located way outside the city limits, convenient to absolutely no one, huge gravel parking lot, very interested police presence, broiling summer sun, etc. Imagine the late 90’s shed circuit: your Polarises, your Lakewoods, your Walnut Creeks. You get the point.

AND YET, for some reason known only to them, Phish have chosen this particular venue to unload the magic time and again over the years. For proof, and for sake of brevity, I offer Only one example: the massive, world shattering “Harry Hood”>”David Bowie” second set pairing from 7/25/03, which remains to me the quintessential 2.0 jam and one of the finest jams of their career. If you haven’t heard it, I strongly recommend taking a second to give it a spin.

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[Recap of last night's show courtesy of user TwiceBitten, Nick Williams. Note that the opinions expressed by a recapper of a show on this blog are not necessarily shared by any volunteer who works on Phish.net, and there is no "official" Phish.net "take" of a show. We rely on volunteer fans like you to recap shows. -Ed.]

Blossom is perhaps the most beautiful traditional “shed” in the country. “The venue is located in Cuyahoga Valley National Park and is administered by the Cleveland Orchestra’s non profit organization,” I told my wife as we exited the highway and made our way towards the T.A.Z. Driving through a beautiful river valley to see Phish is a far cry from your usual trek through suburban sprawl. We arrived at a back entrance to the venue only to find it blocked by a Police barricade. I got out to ask the cop directions and he informed me that I was in luck because he was about to “open this b*tch right up.” Score. We quickly found our way in and were waltzing through security before we knew it.

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[We would like to thank Alaina Stamatis, user @farmhose (@fad_albert on twitter and instagram), for recapping last night's show. Please note that the opinions expressed by a recapper for a show on this blog are not necessarily those of any volunteer who works on Phish.net. We are all fans with varying opinions, just like you. -Ed.]

When the border agent asked us what our plans were for our trip into Canada, we probably should have just lied to him. It wouldn't have made a difference, however, because we have 57 stickers on our car, including but not limited to an oversized Stealie with two dancing bears on the hood. At the time of our border crossing, we were also, for lack of a better term, dressed like wooks.

"We're seeing a concert."

"Who are you here to see?" the border agent asked in the most serious tone one can conjure while still having a Canadian accent.

"Phish, man, greatest show on earth! If you have the night off you should-"

A couple SWAT-team-type bros in skin-tight black uniforms approached. This was not my bachelorette party and these were definitely not strippers. They dismantled the car. Luckily (intentionally) we brought nothing of interest. "Enjoy the concert, guys."

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Is it time, yet? Has it spent long enough fermenting in the ground that we can take it out and do something with it, again? For a bunch of humans who pride themselves on their ability to appreciate the present moment and all the ephemeral beauty it has to offer when the course is uncharted, we sure do enjoy swimming around in nostalgia, don’t we? As I get older this once indulgent tendency of mine has waned and I see the irony of hoping to relive the moments that were only so beautiful in the first place because of how fleeting they were. That perfectly placed note on the crest of a crescendo that just as quickly comes crashing down on the other side. How long can you stay surfing when you’re busy talking about the wave you caught last week? But you know, as I get older time starts to feel a bit more like an illusion, and sometimes we do find ourselves at these milestones and it feels appropriate to check in on what history has to tell us if we put our ear to the dirty, sticky ground. So if I can be permitted the indulgence, let me take you back to the Summer of ’99, and a string of shows I caught twenty years ago, from July 12th to July 21st, and see how a window into that moment in time might help us appreciate this one that much more.

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[Recap/review of last night's Bonnaroo show is courtesy of Michael Ayers, user @yhgtbfkm. Note that there was no recap/review posted to the blog about Roo1's show, because no one attending the show volunteered to recap it, and there wasn't a webcast of it either, and we decided not to recap it based simply on the LivePhish recording. -Ed.]

Ahh, Bonnaroo. The perennial jam band festival that’s not really a jam band festival anymore.

I’ve had the pleasure of only attending Bonnaroo once, back in 2005. I saw a slew of amazing sets that weekend, including Benevento Russo Duo with Mike Gordon (a show you should definitely check out if you haven’t), Keller Williams, Jurassic 5 and Dave Matthews Band (laugh all you want, it was my first time seeing them and I really enjoyed it). That’s the nice part about festivals like this, it gives you the opportunity to see acts in the same place that you normally wouldn’t.

After the St Louis shows, I texted a good friend of mine who was on the fence about driving up to Camden to see them. I said, “Dude, I might be biased, but they are already playing lights out. You can’t miss seeing them in Camden.” I thought both nights in St Louis were spectacular. I will admit, the second night in particular will always be near and dear to my heart because of what transpired during the setbreak and how set two started out. I felt like there was little rust in the St. Louis shows (which you sometimes can’t say for tour openers), which made me both excited for the two nights at Bonnaroo and disappointed that I was not attending them.

So what will the boys have in store for us for Sunday down in Manchester? Will they bust out something they haven’t played in years (looking at you, "Free Bird")? Will Bo Bice and Trey share the stage again? (Spoiler alert: they did not, thank god.) Everyone is familiar with the old adage “Never Miss A Sunday Show,” would that apply to tonight as well? Let’s find out.

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Welcome to the 380th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third of June. The winner will receive an MP3 download codes 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. The clips are connected by a theme, but the theme 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, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Answer: In winning his seventh context this week, @HarborSeal is (fittingly?) Emeritus #23 to enter the MJM Hall of Fame. After reading his awesome comment below explaining how he cracked this nut, it should be no surprise to anyone that he'd be able to solve so many of these, including this week's triple clipper without even needing the hint. That's right, it took less than four hours from the time these clips dropped to figure out that all these jams were played in Utah: 6/9/94 "Mike's Song," 7/15/03 "Spread It Round," and 6/8/95 "Tweezer." For his efforts, not only does he win a free MP3 download code from our friends at LivePhish.com, he also receives a pair of Propet Tour Walkers, free unlimited lifetime access to the Jam Charts he created for this site, a signed photo of Fishman (NSFW), and of course, the requisite copy of the keys to the vault and addition to the MJM+Phish iOS group text. Did I mention that no one took longer than @HarborSeal between their first and seventh wins? True story: when he won his first, it was the first MJM after the "Tahoe Tweezer" was played! Congrats to the man of the hour, and we'll see how long it takes @MikeThong to join him at the pier. Come back next week for more Phishy goodness at MJM381.

[Would like to thank user @KipMat Matt Schrag for recapping St. Louis for the blog. Be advised that the opinions offered in a "recap" of a show (or in any post) on Phish.net's blog are not necessarily shared by any of the other many volunteers who work on the site. We would appreciate it if you correct anyone out there ignorant enough to suggest that the "recap" of a show on this site is in any way, shape, or form an "official" view of the show by Phish.net. There is no such thing, and no such thing has ever existed at any time at all whatsoever. Thank you. -Ed.]

I had initially volunteered to write just one show recap for the Blog, but was asked by Phish.net to provide recaps for both nights of the tour-opening St. Louis run. Several well-meaning folks read my recap of last night’s show, and felt that it was lacking, or simply not what they were expecting.

This site is one of several sources on the internet for day-after recaps of Phish shows. These recaps are traditionally linear in form, in that they provide a rundown of the setlist, start to finish, with commentary on each song. I do not prefer this style for two reasons: fluff, and formula. A recap doesn’t have to include an opinion on every single song. Even though sentiments like “I love 'Roggae' it’s one of my 50 favorite Phish songs!” or “I wish I could hear 'Bouncing Around The Room' at every show!” are pleasing and help spread good vibes, they don’t pique my interest. And because recaps are essentially newspaper-style journalism, the writing tends to fall back on tired conventions to fill space. "Song A featured X, then segued into song B which featured Y," or "Phish often does ______ during a show, and tonight was no exception." I acknowledge that there’s an audience for this kind of journalism; I just find it bland.

So let’s talk about last night’s show! @EvenCarlSagan disagrees with me, but I thought the first set was weak sauce up through “We Have Come To Outlive Our Brains.” Everything up until that point struck me as safe, by-the-numbers Phish, while a noticeable portion of the audience was out on the concourse watching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals on the mounted flat-screen tv’s. Nothing from the stage seemed “off," but the music just wasn’t happening for me. The ice was broken by Trey’s acknowledgement of blowing the repeat of the chorus of “WACTOOB” by hamming it up and asking the audience to sing along. The band’s performance seemed to refocus after the flub, and the rest of the set was a distinct improvement to my ears. Of course, the news that the St. Louis Blues had won the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history had spread during “Run Like An Antelope," and New Jersey Devils fan Chris Kuroda (pictured here in 1989) was gracious enough to shine bright blue and gold lights on the audience, using the Blues’ team colors to acknowledge the occasion.

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