PHRE FORUM THIS WEEKEND
Phans for Racial Equity (PHRE) will host two events via Zoom this Saturday, May 30th, for which you can register at https://bit.ly/3fO2gXa (or see the QR code in image to the right.)
Beginning at 5 p.m. ET, Jay Curley of Ben & Jerry's will host a public forum -- "In a Minute I'll be PHRE: Origins & Organizing" -- to address how phans of color's experiences at Phish shows are different from those of white phans, and to talk about what fans can do together to make the scene as inclusive as possible as well as an opportunity and responsibility to act for racial justice in the broader world. The forum will also address PHRE's origins, including the "Phish Scene So White: Let's Talk" article, the online backlash, and what that says about the Phish fan community; as well as about PHRE's mission and core activities, including tabling at Phish shows and working with venues to address harassment, and how folks can get involved.
At 7:30 p.m. ET, come back for "Party Time! Happy Hour", to hang out and listen to some great music from a diverse and exciting lineup of performers who are excited to support PHRE's mission: Jackie Venson, Hayley Jane, Gordon Sterling, Garrin Benfield, Neel Singh, and Andy Greenberg (of Runaway Gin).
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 418
Welcome to the 418th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the final and most difficult contest of May - thanks again to my broniac @schvice for his help on one of the clips! If you haven't noticed, while I may be the mouthpiece for this thing, I've got a whole crew of MJM Hall of Famers sending me juicy clips year-round. That's how we keep this series rolling despite rapidly approaching the ten year mark (!?), which, incidentally will be celebrated during MJM420 #blazeon. As usual, 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 dates of all three mystery clips. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. I hope you enjoy yourself this Memorial Day.
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 417
Welcome to the 417th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third contest of May - this week's clips come courtesy of MJM Hall of Famer @justino. 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 both mystery clips. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!
MOCKINGBIRD FOUNDATION VIRTUAL RUN
Announcing the 2020 Mockingbird Foundation Virtual Run!
Summer 2020 is shaping up to be a year of canceled events. Maybe we can’t gather in large groups, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to be together as a community, to both share an event and help The Mockingbird Foundation support music education! Outdoor walks and runs - with social distancing maintained - are considered to be essential activities for our physical and mental health. Let’s get together as a community and agree on this: we’re about to run!
Read the details below and then sign up!
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 416
Welcome to the 416th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the second contest of May - thanks to fellow MJM HoFer and overall broniac @schvice for feeding the blahg one of this week's clips. 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 both mystery clips, which are connected by a theme. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!
THE PRINCETON FOOTNOTES COVER "JULIUS"
In case you missed it, The Princeton Footnotes released a cover of “Julius” that has over eleven thousand views on YouTube as of today. I touched-base with Douglas Corzine (Princeton ’20) about the group and the background of their cover of “Julius.” -charlie
CD: So what’s the background of this excellent cover?
DC: The Footnotes have been around since 1959, and our repertoire changes every year. “Julius” was one of the group's signature songs in the early 2000’s, but the arrangement was retired about ten years ago.
JAM OF THE ERA
Following the completion of the 2019 edition of the annual Jam of the Year (JOTY) tournament, forum regular @Ry_storm proposed a larger-scale Jam of the Era tournament for all of 3.0 (so far) to keep everyone listening while many of us are stuck at home or otherwise out of our regular routines.
Seeding was done through an open call to forum users to rank up to 64 unique versions of songs since 2009. 238 different selections were made through dozens of submissions.
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 415
Welcome to the 415th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the first and easiest of May. 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 after I've posted the new clip, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET 6 PM PT / 9 PM ET. Good luck, and May the Fourth be with you!
PHISH.NET #HOMETASKING #3 ANNOUNCED
This launches the third of at least 10 weekend-long challenges to help get you out of Zoom, back into some Phishiness, and engaged with housemates, with something to share as a result. Top that with weekly prizes, a grand prize, and the glory of crushing the competition with your creativity and wit, and... how could you not take part??
This week's challenge calls for a bit more effort, the first of a series of three that might involve moving furniture, perhaps redecorating, maybe even making use of blankets or boxes or whatever you have round the house. As always, post your 20-second video to this thread by Monday at noon Pacific, after which your submissions will be judged by a guest Taskmaster, with a montage to be posted prior to Tuesday's Dinner & a Movie archive show.
You have 72 hours, and your time... starts... NOW!
LARP PHISH ALBUM COVERS RATED
This past weekend's challenge in the Phish.net #Hometasking series was to create a live-action representation of a Phish album cover. And this week's Taskmaster Chris Cagle has completed his evaluations, made his decisions, and put together some fantastic viewing for your setbreak or post-Dinner & a Movie viewing:
DANCE WITH JOHN RUA
[Thanks to Mockingbird board member Matt Sexauer for sharing this...]
John Rua, the amazing choreographer of NYE Clones and Halloween's Abe Vigoda Wombat, has agreed to teach us some new Martian Monster dance steps for the April 28 Dinner & A Movie opener. We will be setting up a Zoom link for those who want to join around 8:30 PM during the webcast to dance in unison. The goal is to surprise the band by sharing that link and subsequent video with them. If you can't join Zoom then you can always film yourself during the webcast and post to Facebook, IG, Twitter with the hashtag #MartianMonster. This community has always been a two-way street, and hopefully we can send a little fun back their way during these crazy times. So practice the dance, and we'll see you for Dinner & A Movie!
Check out the video after the jump...
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 414
Welcome to the 414th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the final contest of April. Partly because I didn't leave myself enough time to prepare this week's puzzle in the traditional format, partly because it was fun the last time we did it, and partly because many of us are sheltering in place, we're going to switch up the format this week. That's right folks: this week, we'll be doing our second (I think?) MJM race! You may be asking yourself, "what the hell is an MJM race, brovid??". As you well should be. It's quite simple actually: at 2 PM PT / 5 PM ET, I'll update the blahg with some clips. Instead of the selection of these clips being an exercise in sadism, and their identification being an act of masochism, the clips will all come from "well-known" jams. Some of these jams might be so well-known they've never been used as MJM clips in the past; others may be recycled from earlier MJMs - regardless, despite the subjective nature of labeling a jam "well-known," by the end of today, you best know these bad boys inside and out. First one to catch 'em all wins an MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. We're looking for songs and dates here folks, as usual.
IT WAS 30 YEARS AGO TODAY...
[We want to thank Patti C. (.net user @SharingintheGroov) for relaying her tale of discovering Phish 30 years ago today...]
It was a semi-stormy Wednesday afternoon in April 1990, and I was walking across campus on my way back from class at the University of Notre Dame. I could hear some grooving sounds coming from what I assumed was a campus band playing on the quad by the fountain, as often was the case for one reason or another on any given day. But something different was catching my ear and I found my feet moving to the sound, rather than back to the dorm.
I sat down in my favorite patch of grass in front of the band that was playing, among a small handful of other students and I watched. And I listened. I was intrigued, yet thoroughly puzzled (particularly by the bass lines, truth be told). My frame of musical appreciation at this point in my life was Springsteen, U2, Tom Petty... You get the idea. I had no idea who was playing or what was happening, but I was shook.
RECENCY BIAS IN PHISH.NET SHOW RATINGS
[we'd like to thank Prof. Paul Jakus, @paulj, for yet another thought-provoking statistical analysis of Phish.net data - ed.]
Phish.net show ratings are meant to convey Phish fans’ collective perception of how good a show was, but these ratings are subject to a number of biases. For example, .net ratings do not come from a random sample (sampling bias), and people tend to rate the shows they’ve attended quite highly (attendance bias).
Another possible bias, which the .net Cognoscenti have termed “Recency Bias”, is the tendency to rate a show during the first few days after the performance, if not immediately after the show. It is believed that ratings posted in the immediate aftermath of a concert will reflect the warm glow of that experience. People have not taken the time to reflect on the quality of that show relative to the performances immediately before or after, or within the context of an entire Phish tour. Recency bias implies that a show’s rating will decline as its warm glow dissipates.
It occurred to me that I could estimate the magnitude of recency bias using a Phish show database I’ve periodically updated since Summer 2018. We’ll look solely at the 21-show Summer 2018 tour, which started at Lake Tahoe on July 17 and ended at Dick’s on September 2. For each show, we can use snapshots of .net ratings taken on October 2, 2018, on May 5, 2019, and on April 2, 2020. Thus, we have ratings taken one month after the conclusion of tour, 8 months after tour, and 19 months after tour.
Here are the ratings time paths of three Summer 2018 shows [Gorge Night 3 (7/22/18), Bill Graham Civic Auditorium Night 2 (7/25/18), and The Forum Night 1 (7/27)]:
MYSTERY JAM MONDAY PART 413
Welcome to the 413th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third contest of April. 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 both mystery clips. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Happy holidays!
Phish.net
The Mockingbird Foundation