Welcome to the 344th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the final and most difficult of September, and a special edition: 8-time MJM winner and Hall of Famer @justino has chosen this week's jams and handed them off to fellow emeritus @wforwumbo (whose audio wizardry has been on full display for months) for beautification. The result? Some dope jams that make a fair MJM, but one not for the faint of heart. 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!

Welcome to the 343rd edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third of five September editions. 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:

Answer: Congrats to second-time MJM winner @MikeThong, who wins for the first time in more than 5 years by recognizing the car from the cover of The Siket Disc and identifying this week's jams: 8/30/14 "Down with Disease", 7/24/99 "The Mango Song (> Jam)," and the 1/4/03 "Weekapaug Groove," each of which careens into a song from the aforementioned album like a potato to the throat. Stay tuned for MJM344 on Monday, when we'll have a special guest...

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 342nd edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the second 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 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!

Answer: Congrats to @lostboy01 on his second win in three MJMs and third overall! This week, thanks to some help from another user, he identified the two SPAC 2012 jams: the 7/8/12 "Piper" and the 7/6/12 "Ghost." Stay tuned Monday for MJM343!

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!