Only one other large indoor venue stacks up against the Hampton Coliseum in terms of relevance to the band’s history through the years. From their first stop there in 1995, Phish has crafted an awesome reputation for greatness within the round room off the Hampton Roads. It was no fluke that the band chose the space for their return in 2009, and from the moment it was announced, this run has been seen as an important destination event for many fans, the third straight three night stand coming five years after their last visit.

Actually, while we’re using numbers... on the second night of their tenth year at The Mothership (the endearing nickname fans have given Hampton Coliseum, due to its resemblance of the spaceship from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"), Phish performed their twentieth concert in the hallowed space. The numerological unlikelihood that this would be also be the 20th day of the 10th month of this year is surely just insignificant and coincidental. However, we Phish fans are certainly a very superstitious lot.

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[Thank you to user @Jsauce, Josh Martin, for the recap. -Ed.]

Greetings from Hampton, everybody. Glad to be back with you all. Truth: I listened to a lot of Phish last summer. I hit the live phish app pipe so hard I thought my brain was going to bleed. A break was in order and a break was had. It was nice to come back to tour feeling hungry for the music.

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[Thank you to user Aaron Presuhn for stepping up and recapping last night's show. -Ed.]

Fall tour. Indoors, dark, intimate, a completely different vibe than outdoor summer Phish. It was a chilly day, but the Times Union Center was HOT. Night one was amazing, and it set the tone for what I thought to be a great, well-played set of shows.

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[Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, an ordinarily reliable, clear-headed member of our team, and both a trusted and highly esteemed colleague, had so much deleterious fun at this fall's tour opener in Albany that he was mentally and physically unable to "recap" the show for this website. We therefore respectfully request that YOU "recap" the show in the Comments section below, but only if you attended it, lest you offend the more sensitive among us who believe a recap lacks credibility if the recapper is recapping based strictly on listening to a recording or viewing a webcast. -Ed.]

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Welcome back to From the Tapers’ Section! As in previous editions of FTTS, I've pulled some choice Phish performances from my catalog of tapes and performed some tasteful post-production work on the recordings to optimize the listening experience. But unlike previous editions of FTTS, instead of working on and sharing an entire show, I've followed the Live Bait model and am sharing a compilation of jams that @ucpete lovingly calls Stash the Wumbo. Like the jams featured in Kevin Shapiro's series, these jams were played in the same venues and locations the band will play during the upcoming Fall Tour, but unlike Live Bait, all the recordings featured in this compilation come from high quality, fan-made audience ("AUD") recordings. There’s a lot to digest here, so let’s dig in:

Albany, NY: 10/9/99 "Ghost," 12/1/03 "Tweezer"

Phish has a history of throwing down at Times Union Center (née Kickerbocker Arena, later known as the Pepsi Arena): the monstrous "Seven Below" -> "Ghost" from 11/28/09, the famous "You Enjoy Myself" with silent jam from 12/9/95, the culmination of cow funk from Fall Tour ’97. As this series is as much about embracing AUD culture as it is discovering the recesses of Phish’s catalog, I present to you two gems I never see discussed. Fall ’99 follows hot on the heels of a stellar summer tour; instead of the intense and fiery grooves of Summer ’99, the band patiently explores quieter ambient pastures in October ’99. The back half of this "Ghost" jam is a perfect example, as the band jumps into the deep end and propels us through a cloudy haze. To contrast this soft blanket of oozing warmth, I have yang’d the yin with the throaty 12/1/03 "Tweezer." This "Tweezer" has tense, aggressive bark throughout as waves upon waves of psychedelic teeth match Trey’s unabashed and compressor-free tone.

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[we'd like to thank Paul Jakus, @paulj, for his second deep dive into the statistice of Phish. - ed.]

Phish fans are famously obsessive about the band, and the setlists on .net reflect that obsession. Setlists on Phish.net are not simply a list of songs played; instead we are provided with a wealth of information about debuts, bustouts, narrations, and even notation denoting two types of segues. All of this information tries to characterize what happened at a concert (far more than just listing a bunch of songs) with the goal of pointing us to shows of particular interest.

But does this additional information have value? Does knowing the number of “->” segues, or that a song hasn’t been played in over 100 shows, truly correlate with how fans of the band perceive the quality of a given show? Can we look at an intriguing setlist from 10 or 15 years ago (or look at today’s setlists a decade from now) and use its content to determine whether or not to listen to the show? That is, do the elements of a Phish setlist relate to how we, the members of Phish.net, rate Phish shows?

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Welcome to the 347th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third of five October single-clip MJMs. 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. Have fun!

Note: No n00b head start this week, so don't dawdle!

Author's Note: Hello, everybody! @wforwumbo here, this is the first time I am officially hosting MJM. After becoming an emeritus back in February, I have been working behind the scenes with @ucpete to construct puzzles, as well as apply studio production to the clips I use from my personal archive of tapes. I've had a lot of fun doing this, and am excited to become a regular staple as MJM host. I hope you enjoy these puzzles as much as I do when creating them, so let's have some fun with this. On another note, keep an eye on the blog as I'll have another of my taper-based treats for all of you within the next day to celebrate the kicking off of Fall Tour '18. Good luck!

Answer: Coming in hot a mere 37 minutes after initial posting, @lostboy01 picks up his sixth MJM win and his third in a row! He correctly identified, near its five year anniversary, the 10/26/13 Light - a jam that, characteristic for this tour, is an oft-forgotten buried gem as it gets overshadowed by bigger jams in the show. For his efforts he has received yet another download code, and he also now knocks on the door to the promised land of MJM emeritus status. Now the only question that remains for him is when, not if. Stay tuned for another single clip MJM next week, and in the meantime enjoy the Hampton run this weekend!

As everyone is getting ready for Fall Tour, we at HF Pod released a mini episode to let you know about a Halloween giveaway contest, the return of Couch Report, and a live event in Hampton. Oh, and a jam from Albany to get you in the mood for Fall Tour.

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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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Welcome to the 346th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the second of five October single-clip MJMs. 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. Have fun!

Note: No n00b head start this week, so don't dawdle!

Answer: He's on fire! @lostboy01 did it again folks, this time reeling in his fifth overall MJM win. This week, he knew Page's synth noises weren't of the '17 - '18 variety, but rather were of the Europe '97 variety, and in a shade over a half hour he correctly identified the 7/10/97 "Llama." If you haven't heard the entire show, do so posthaste! MJM347 will be another single-clipper – have fun on Fall Tour!