[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!

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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Welcome to the 338th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the second of August. The winner will receive THREE MP3 download codes courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net (and @johnnyd, who threw his double code victory back into the pot last week). To win, be the first person to identify the songs and dates of the two 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!

[Recap is courtesy of user @SmilerControl, Brandy Davis. -Ed.]

Phish returned to Columbia, Maryland, last night for a traditional Saturday/Sunday two-night run at Merriweather Post Pavillion, a celebrated venue that the band started headlining 20 years ago (1998-08-08, well worth a nostalgic listen). MPP has made some significant changes in the three years since Phish last visited. Most are improvements, including a raised pavilion roof for better sight lines from the lawn, and a renovated parking infrastructure that made getting in and out a bit easier. Many fans are saddened, however, by the trading-in of field and forest for a more corporate-park vibe. Tailgating was still on, though, even in the new “Lot 2” parking garage that’s only a short walk from the gate. Despite its corporate feel, the venue seems to have done much to accommodate the Phish community and our shenanigans, and even named one of their new streets “Divided Sky Drive” in the band’s honor.

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