In episode 3, we emerge from the traffic jam, and we are officially on Big Cypress. We hear Trey and Tom reflect on cruising Big Cypress, and talk to Jon Fishman, Brad Sands, John Paluska and lots of fans about their experiences on site. And we start to get to the music. There's music!

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[We would like to thank user Aaron Presuhn for recapping last night's show.]

On a cold Wednesday night, The Phish from Vermont returned to The Petersen Events Center, University of Pittsburgh campus. Contrast tonight’s weather with the last time they played here in 2017...when it was about 95 degrees. Walking up that damn hill in searing midday heat after drinking a Founder’s KBS was no fun. That show happened to fall on my birthday, and it was a heater to go along with the weather. I was excited to see how tonight shook out!

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Howdy folks, or I guess that should be PHOLKS right??? My name is Bill and I am substituting for my brother-in-law Martin (@Doctor_Smarty) for this article. He had intended to tell you guys about the Phish concert at The Met last night, but there was a problem. I am subscribed to SIRIUSXM and he isn’t. When I got the email asking me if I wanted to go to the concert, I entered the drawing assuming I could just give the tickets to my brother-in-law and he and his wife could go see their favorite band. Unfortunately, the tickets were non-transferable, so my brother-in-law and his wife stayed back in Oregon instead of coming out to spend Thanksgiving with the rest of our family. That meant that me and my wife went to the concert instead. He told me that you guys would be interested to know how it all went down, so this is my attempt to do that. Obviously I won’t know any of the lingo you guys usually use to talk about this stuff. But here goes.

I’m not very big into going to live concerts to be honest. I’m more inclined to be at home with a glass of Crown Royal and puff on a Cuban cigar while sitting next to my fire pit listening to classic rock on my Sonos. In fact, the only concert I have ever been to before last night was when @Doctor_Smarty took me and his sister (my wife) to see Guns N Roses at the Florida Suncoast Dome on December 28th, 1991. That was quite an experience, let me tell you. But probably best I don’t. Suffice to say, I had not been back to a concert since. I also never listen to Phish Radio on SIRIUSXM. My favorite channel is Classic Rewind. My favorite band is arguably, with all due respect to Bob Dylan, Bearsville Records’ greatest artist...FOGHAT!!. Man...I just can’t get enough of that “Slow Ride” if you know what I mean? Alright, take it easy. As you can imagine, other than when Martin comes to visit, I haven’t really heard any Phish and don’t really know the songs. My ears were a blank canvas in that respect. After last night, I’m feeling like they are more like one of those Jackson Pollock splatter-gram deals now. Are rock concerts always like this?

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Welcome to the 398th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the first and easiest of December. The winner will receive THREE (!) MP3 download codes courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net and our friend @raisinsnacks, who tossed their codes back into the pool for a n00b triple crown this week. 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, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

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[We would once again like to thank Alaina Stamatis, user @farmhose (twitter @fad_albert), for recapping last night's show. -Ed.]

Ah yes, Long Island. The New Jersey that nobody talks about. The land of sports cars smashed into trees with smoke slowly rising from them and no driver or passengers to be found. The only island you can visit where you'll see a housewife driving a fat Benz with a vanity plate that reads XANAX. Long Island, where you can advertise that you're driving on Xanax with no recourse.

Which naturally leads us to Long Island's prodigal son: Billy Joel. Many of us in the Phish community know of Mr. Joel's real and/or exaggerated and/or entirely fictional rivalry with Phish (for hogging MSG every New Year's Eve despite being a "second rate cover band"); but what y'all might've missed is that Mr. Joel already had a longstanding rivalry with Long Island for requiring that he drive his sports cars "safely" and "on the road." For when I was in high school Mr. Joel wrecked his third hot rod in two years when he swerved off the road, over the curb, across the lawn, and into a sleeping old man's living room. And while this sleeping old man was probably the only Long Islander who didn't double as a Billy Joel fan (a Piano Fan?), when the police arrived on the scene, the officers were quite starstruck. Harkening back to moments ago when we were discussing a brazen use of Xanax while operating heavy machinery: despite driving directly into someone's house, Mr. Joel was not given a breathalyzer test.

So what was going to happen to us tonight? Would a fuming Billy Joel drive through the center of Shakedown? And more importantly, was Phish going to mow down our psyches and egos with some searing, soaring, and face melting hetty jams?

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Ok turkeys it’s recap time! For everyone at home keeping score the year is 2019. The date is November 30th, and it also happens to be Thanksgiving weekend. (Here in the USA anyway; back home in Canada where I’m from we do Thanksgiving a month earlier. But don’t worry, we have a long terrible genocidal history with respect to our indigenous population too.) Anyway, a lot to be grateful for tonight, and I’m sure a lot of folks went home happy. I’ll start my recap by offering some gratitude for finally having met @Icculus face-to-face, a solid 25 years after our initial exchange via a B&P of what I believe was the Bomb Factory.

On that note, the band certainly brought out some heavy artillery tonight, but count me among those who hope that “Plasma” reprise is now safely stored away in its holster for the foreseeable future. I thought the show had some powerful moments, and also some surprisingly rough ones, but we’ll get to that…

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IT has been almost twenty-five years since Phish first played the Civic Center in Providence (12/29/94), and sixteen years since a version of a song performed on November 29 made the jam charts. But then again, it’s been ten years since Phish last even performed on November 29 (in Portland, ME).

Did Phish perform a 59 minute “Runaway Jim” last night, like they did at the Worcester Centrum twenty-two years ago on November 29? (Of course not, WTF is wrong with you.) But did they play a lot of songs that “Trey’s Notebook” predicted they would play? (Remarkably, only a few!) Ok, but did they perform any versions of songs that were so unquestionably “above-average great” and noteworthy that the jam charts team will undoubtedly vote them onto the charts in due course!?

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Welcome to the 397th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the last of November. 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 all three mystery clips. The clips are connected by a theme, but the theme 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, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Hint: Technically, these jams were played in three different venues.

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What's it like to build a city for 75,000 fans from scratch? Why did people sit in traffic for 18 hours waiting to get into Big Cypress? And were there actually alligators? In episode two, Jesse Jarnow takes listeners through the planning and fan arrival to Big Cypress. They hear from Trey, Fish, John Paluska, Brad Sands, Tom Marshall, Jefferson Waful and others.

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Welcome to the 396th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third of November. The winner will receive an MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. This week's puzzle had a helping friendly hand from MJM HoFer @justino - thanks dude! To win, be the first person to identify the songs and dates of both mystery clips. The clips are connected by a theme, but the theme 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, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

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In episode one of After Midnight, Jesse Jarnow brings in new interviews with Trey, Fishman, Paluska and others to help answer the following questions: Why did 75,000 Phish fans endure an 18-hour traffic jam to see Phish in the Everglades? Why did Phish make 75,000 fans endure a massive traffic jam to see them? What were Phish doing in Florida in the first place?

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Welcome to the 395th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the second of November. This week's jams come from the mind of @schvice, the tenth MJM Emeritus to reach the promised land. The winner will receive two MP3 download codes courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net and our friend @garcia17, who has tossed his final code back into the pool for a double down delight this week. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date 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!

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A preview of After Midnight, an original Osiris podcast celebrating the 20th anniversary of Phish’s Big Cypress festival. Listen to the trailer here. And subscribe today on the show page. This five-episode series, hosted and narrated by Jesse Jarnow, will include interviews with Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, John Paluska, Brad Sands, Beth Montouri-Rowles and many other people who played a key role in making this amazing festival happen.

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[Take the Bait is spirited deliberation centered around the hyperbole of Phish’s music and fandom, passionately exuded via the written words of phish.net contributors @FunkyCFunkyDo and @n00b100. Opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of phish.net, The Mockingbird Foundation, or any fan… but we're pretty sure we’re right. Probably.]

Funky: Geez finally. Sometimes, it takes a while to process greatness, or at least where on the greatness spectrum a thing exists, or doesn’t. In this case, it took almost four months... almost a third of a year is all it took me to be able to simultaneously hum and air guitar all 38-minutes of "Ruby Waves" note for note. Greatness. Who said my only “talent” is the written word? ::crickets:: Well, my mom thinks I’m cool. Now let's get down to what the people really want: ten pages of harcore analysis about one Phish show!

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Welcome to the 394th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the first and easiest of November. The winner will receive two MP3 download codes courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net and our friend @garcia17, who has tossed his final two codes back into the pool for a n00b double down delight this week once again (yes, I still need to update his Hall of Fame-winning MJM from last week, but it's after midnight on Monday and I just got back into town). 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, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

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