Purportedly an intentional tune with an exciting history, “Mind Left Body Jam” is little more than four descending chords. The orthodox history is that Phish is covering a Grateful Dead instrumental derived from the song “Your Mind Has Left Your Body” from the Paul Kantner / Grace Slick album Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun (re-mastered and re-released in 1997).

”Your Mind Has Left Your Body” – Baron von Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun

The album, which came during the lapse between Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, was a powerful collaboration of Bay Area icons - including David Freiberg, Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Jorma Kaukonen, David Crosby,Jack Casady, Papa John Creach, and the Pointer Sisters. (The album also features a tune called “Fishman,” about “the son of Caliban” who “rules the ocean land,” “holds the ocean in his hands,” and is pursued by the singer, who wants to make love to him “over and over in the sand.”) 

Grateful Dead fans have long labelled something the Dead play as "Mind Left Body Jam", and rave about classic performances such as 6/28/74, and 3/24/90 out of “Terrapin Station.” However, Phil Lesh has often insisted that the band never consciously covered or teased the Kantner/Slick song, and never called anything they played “Mind Left Body Jam” (“MLBJ”). The Dead even mocked fans by giving the name “Mud Love Buddy” to a jamming track on Dozin’ at the Knick. Ironically, that mockery seemed to many to institutionalize a suspected connection, even giving it a second name. And due to a widely circulated but mislabeled tape, MLBJ was further confused with the very different “Heaven Help (the Fool) Jam,” full of rockin’ crescendos – and thus, for a time, had a third (and certainly wrong) name.

Phish's improvisational wanderings have similarly included chord progressions for which fans have sought labels, or in which they've attributed intentional allusion. Some of these have at times sounded more like "MLBJ" but been labelled “Dave’s Energy Guide” (or vice versa), despite radical differences: "DEG" (e.g. 4/1/86, 3/23/87, 4/29/87, or 9/8/88) is a bouncing array of interlocking and repeating themes, about as far from "MLBJ’s" four descending chords as you can get. Worse, some have labeled as “MLBJ” delay-loop jams which are not even “DEG,” such as in the “TweezerFest” 5/7/94, before “Bowie” 12/29/94, ending “Mike’s Song” 12/31/95, after “Bouncing” 12/28/96, starting “Bowie” 8/10/97, and during “Scent” 8/17/97, which is possibly the closest to “DEG” during the 1990s.

On eight occasions a progression-like jam strikingly similar to “MLBJ” appears. In three, it's sufficient that Phish.net official lists “MLBJ” in the setlist proper: during the 8/21/93 “Bowie,” the 6/18/94 “Bowie” (likely the strongest of all) and the 11/13/98 "Wolfman's Brother." In five others the appearance is brief enough to constitute only a tease: the 5/13/94 "YEM," the 6/19/95 “Bowie,” the 11/16/95 “Timber,” the 7/31/97 “McGrupp” and the 7/3/11 "Wilson." Other even-less-pronounced but sometimes-cited instances include the 10/29/96 “Mike’s Song” and the 4/2/98 “Twist” jam.

Some fans, of course, find this whole exercise merely amusing, seeing these progressions as no more conscious or intentional than the Dead's "performances" of the "song." Phish has thus included just enough allusion to enhance confusion; doing so is practically their forte.

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