IT did not take long for the powerful energy from Phish's SPAC shows in July to juice "leg two." In August and in early September, 2012, Phish once again performed several shows, and a host of improvisations, that are as "must hear" as the highlights of their 1580+ show career. While there were a few performances that were seemingly through-the-motions, the brief tour concluded incredibly well in early September at Dick's in Colorado. Fans have every reason to be optimistic about the music of the New Year’s Run at Madison Square Garden (12/28 - 12/31/12).

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Welcome to MONDAY NIGHT MYSTERY JAMS here at Phish.net. As usual we will be playing for an MP3 download, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. The rules haven't changed: you need to correctly identify the song and the date to win. Post your guess in the comments. One guess per person per day (with the second “day” starting after I post the hint). A hint will be posted on Tuesday (if necessary) and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Good luck...

Thursday Answer: Congrats to WayIFeel for quickly identifying the 8/5/11 "Roggae." The Blog will be back on Monday with MJMCXXV.

Most Phish fans recognize the band’s early composition “David Bowie” as belonging to a full quiver of songs with improvisational potential. It sits among a select group of 10 songs that have been performed more than 400 times. Perhaps fewer fans realize that once upon a time, “David Bowie” (DB) was one of the primary, if not the leading jamming song. Following its debut in 1986, DB quickly developed into a workhorse and “go to” jamming song, as Tim Wade (@TheEmu) has noted in several of his many early show reviews. Even while such stalwart classics as “Mike’s Song” and “You Enjoy Myself” were played fairly straightforward from 1985 - 1990, DB was fast becoming the choice song for serious, significant “Type II” improvisation. During its peak years, from 1993 - 1995, DB was a super heavyweight for regular and longer duration exploratory jamming, one of a very small group of contenders that included “Mike’s Song,” “YEM,” and “Tweezer.” But after 1995, DB sadly fell into period of steady, and then more precipitous decline. Despite upticks in 1997 and 2003, the trend line was downward. Not only was the song played less frequently, and placed less prominently in setlists, it also lost much of its improvisational fortitude, becoming more of a proverbial horse put out in the pasture for retirement, and typically played in a straightforward, “Type I” (non-exploratory) manner.

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I was thinking about how little play Undermind and Round Room have gotten in 3.0, and I got curious to see how the different albums rank out. Most of this is expected (Originals not on studio albums and cover songs are far and away the top two spots) and some, though perhaps not surprising, seem interesting to me (Joy takes the top spot among studio albums by a quite a bit). In any case, here are the numbers, delivered in the form of a blog entry to justify the hour or so I spent doing it.

Songs appearing on Junta that were also on The White Tape were only counted for Junta. "Slave" was counted as part of The White Tape, which obviously changes the scoring for that album significantly.

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Welcome to the 123rd installment of Mystery Jam Monday here at Phish.net. As usual we will be playing for an MP3 download, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. The rules haven't changed: you need to correctly identify the song and the date to win. Post your guess in the comments. One guess per person per day (with the second “day” starting after I post the hint). A hint will be posted on Tuesday (if necessary) and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Good luck...

Thursday Answer: Congrats to jmponder for quickly identifying the 8/9/04 "Chalk Dust" that I didn't quite mask. The Blog will be back on Monday with another Mystery Jam...

A triumph of moronism, the book A TINY SPACE TO MOVE AND BREATHE (notes from the fall, 1997) compiles a series of essays about Phish and their fall 1997 shows so profoundly asinine that they undermine the foundations of pedagogy, betraying the futility of educating idiots like author Walter “Waxbanks” Holland in the first place.

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Ticketless for NYE, or can you use an extra for a ticketless friend (who can't)? You can win a FREE NYE ticket in Mockingbird Foundation's partner GlowStickWars.com's NYE Sweepstakes. Entry's simple. Here's how.

Just gear up for new years at the GSW online store using the promo code: "PHISHNYE" at checkout. For every $10 you buy, you'll get one entry into the giveaway drawing! To sweeten the pot, your entries will be doubled if your order includes any re-usable, LED products, and every PHISHNYE order will include a bunch of fun freebies.

Remember, 10% of all ShowStick® (thin soft glowstick) sales is donated to The Mockingbird Foundation, so you can can great stuff, give to a great cause, and enter to win a ticket to see a the greatest band ever play MSG on New Year's Eve! No purchase necessary. Full contest details here.

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Welcome to Mystery Jam Monday Part 122 here at Phish.net. As usual we will be playing for an MP3 download, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. The rules haven't changed: you need to correctly identify the song and the date to win. Post your guess in the comments. One guess per person per day (with the second “day” starting after I post the hint). A hint will be posted on Tuesday (if necessary) and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Good luck...

Wednesday Answer: Congrats to McGrupp81 for being the first to get the 5/26/89 "YEM"... obviously a fairly atypical version. The Blog will return on Monday with another Mystery Jam. Happy Thanksgiving!

Some days you get just end up neck deep in it. I knew I was in for trouble when I woke up incredibly hungry and willingly broke my morning breakfast routine and schedule for immediate satisfaction. Fast forward to lunch and a (luckily) damage-free fender bender at the Traffic Circle Satan himself would apologize for and I'm writing off today. Arriving back at my desk, I need to take the edge off, so in go the headphones. Now normally, I'd search for a show to listen to, but inevitably a random show will only add to the day's frustration. That's it! I'm opening Spotify and putting on A Live One.

And then everything changed...

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Welcome to Mystery Jam Monday Part 121 here at Phish.net. As usual we will be playing for an MP3 download, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. The rules haven't changed: you need to correctly identify the song and the date to win. Post your guess in the comments. One guess per person per day (with the second “day” starting after I post the hint). A hint will be posted on Tuesday (if necessary) and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Good luck...

Wednesday Answer: Congrats to @frankzappasmustache2012 for being the first to identify the 11/12/94 "Down With Disease," which, as was noted in the comments, turned eighteen on Monday. And, yes, the Blog acknowledges making this MJ easier than it could have been but, in my defense, I listened to the clip three different times and just didn't have the heart to cut it off before the return to the "DWD"-esque theme. It was just too glorious. The Blog will return on Monday with another Mystery Jam.

Phish fans frequently get generalized-about, ignorantly, by the media. Are we a bunch of delinquents? Take this basic 15-question quiz to see if the media is right about YOU.

If appropriate, select multiple answers, because you get points for each answer choice other than (A).

If you cannot truthfully answer any of a question's answer choices, because you can't recall or otherwise, you get ZERO points for that question.

Please COMMENT with your (honest) scores so that we can demonstrate convincingly to all readers that at least online Phish fans are law-abiding, conscientious, and courteous citizens, who genuinely care about the public welfare.

A = zero points.
B = one (1) point.
C = two (2) points.
D = three (3) points.
E = four (4) points.

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Welcome... Power's back and so is the Mystery Jam here at Phish.net. As usual we will be playing for an MP3 download, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. The rules haven't changed: you need to correctly identify the song and the date to win. Post your guess in the comments. One guess per person per day (with the second “day” starting after I post the hint). A hint will be posted on Tuesday (if necessary) and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Good luck...

Before we go, I hope you'll indulge the Blog in a small plea for charitable donations. As most of you know, Phish.net is an all-volunteer project of the Mockingbird Foundation. While donations to Mockingbird are always welcome, if you enjoy the Mystery Jam (or Phish.net, in general) and can afford to, please consider making a donation to the Red Cross or one of the many other worthwhile charitable organizations helping families recover from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

Thursday Answer: Congrats to jmponder for being the first to ID the 7/29/98 "Buried Alive." Really makes you wonder why they never tried to jam that song out again. The Blog will return on Monday with another Mystery Jam...

The Lawn Boys, a Phish tribute band, will be doing a benefit performance for The Mockingbird Foundation, to support our mission of providing music education to underserved kids and potential emergency grants to replace musical instruments in schools ravaged by Hurricane Sandy (as we've done in previous disasters, as soon as worthy beneficiaries can be identified, a process that can take several months).

The show will be happening at The Canal Room in Manhattan at 285 West Broadway, NYC, beginning a bit earlier than the 10 p.m. time originally scheduled because of the venue rescheduling a storm cancelled show; The Lawn Boys will be starting around 8:30 p.m. and playing until about 11:00 p.m. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door.

Further information about The Lawn Boys is available on their Facebook page or website www.thelawnboysnyc.com. Further information about The Mockingbird Foundation is available at Phish.net's sister website at www.mbird.org.

If you can't make the show and would like to donate to the benefit and Mockingbird's disaster relief efforts, use the "donate" buttons on Phish.net or Mbird.org, put "The Lawn Boys benefit" or "Sandy Disaster Relief" in the PayPal comment box and we'll count your proceeds with The Lawn Boys benefit proceeds. (You'll also get a "Donated in 2012" achievement badge on your Phish.net user profile if you haven't yet donated to Mockingbird this year).

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The Mimi Fishman Foundation has launched a new on-line charity auction that features several New Years Eve ticket/poster packages as well as Phish memorabilia featuring a very rare kick drum head that was used by Phish in the 90's and has been signed by the band. The auction also includes a large number of Phish 2012 Summer Tour posters signed by the band and a very unique memorabilia package from the 2011 New Years run. Umphrey's McGee and the String Cheese Incident have kindly contributed New Years Eve ticket/poster packages as well.

The on-line auction is currently live with the bidding coming to close November 14.

To view and/or bid on the auction, as well as read about the charities the auction supports, please visit the Mimi Fishman Foundation Auction Page.

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