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The Mockingbird Foundation has announced eleven new grants totaling $59,650. The all-volunteer nonprofit's 20th round of competitive funding reached nine states, including the first Mockingbird grant in Rhode Island. The Foundation has now made 285 grants in 47 states totalling $977,743.40.

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Welcome to the 226th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I've posted three clips this week -- these three clips share something in common. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the three mystery jam clips, and answer what they share in common. Each person gets one attempt per day, with the second “day” starting after the Blog posts the hint -- each answer should contain three songs / dates, along with the commonality between them. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. The winner will receive an MP3 code good for a free download of any show, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck, and have a great Memorial Day -- the Blog takes no political stance, but maybe we can take a moment today to remember those who have died in service of our country, enabling us to do things like BBQing and drinking beer all day, or listening to 30 second Phish clips over and over again in hopes of winning MP3 download codes!

Answer: Congrats to four-time winner @highhat, who quickly identified the 7/28/98 Lengthwise, the9/27/00 Gumbo, and the 11/27/09 Tomorrow's Song – all songs with Fishman-penned lyrics. The MJM will take a short break and will return on Monday, June 20th, just in time for Summer Tour.

Screens 'n' Suds has announced their 2016 Chicago Big Event on Saturday, June 25th at Links Taproom. This annual gathering celebrates craft beer and screen printed art while raising money for charity.

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Over the years, Phish has drawn legitimately creative talents into its orbit. One such talent is Nick Setteducato, the amateur filmmaker behind the stop-motion animated short 2016: A Space Oddity. Nick’s project delighted the online Phish community when it was published last week. We loved it, too, and had a few burning questions for Nick.

Okay, we had a lot of burning questions for Nick. First, here’s the video, because you know you want to watch it again:

2016: A Space Oddity from Nicholas Setteducato on Vimeo.

Nick, you moved to New Zealand 8 years ago to work with Peter Jackson. What do you do with and for him and what are you working on now?

I work for his production company, Wingnut Films. I do photography and help look after Wingnut’s collections and archives, but Peter asks me to help him with a lot of personal imaging projects, using Photoshop and the like.

Do you miss your old home?

I really love Wellington, but I do miss a lot of things about New Jersey. Bagels, Taylor Ham, Star Tavern pizza. My mom still sends me bags of Racioppi’s Taralles. They’re a real North Jersey Italian thing. I’ve shared them with some friends here, and I’m convinced I could make a fortune importing them.

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Welcome to the 225th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I've posted NINE clips this week -- these nine clips share something in common. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the nine mystery jam clips, and answer what the nine clips share in common.Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint -- each guess should contain nine songs / dates, and a guess at the commonality. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. The winner will receive an MP3 code good for a free download of any show, courtesy of our friends atLivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck!

Note: Some (iOS) users may notice that the audio skips back to the first clip only halfway in, looping indefinitely. If that's the case, you can listen here.

Hint:

Answer: Congrats to @TwiceBitten, now @TwiceAnMJMWinner, who correctly identified the 5/7/94 Dog Log (Soundcheck), 6/16/95 Runaway Jim, 9/2/87 Shaggy Dog, 7/12/03 Dogs Stole Things, 5/3/85 McGrupp (PhishTracks and Phish.in' have a track labeled "Whipping Post -> McGrupp", but it only contains Whipping Post), 8/21/15 The Dogs, 7/23/88 No Dogs Allowed, 8/21/87 Harpua, and 12/2/97 Dog Faced Boy, as well as the canine theme that connects them all. I must say I'm really pleased with so many folks taking a crack at this week's crazy MJM, so I'm curious to see how folks do next week when we'll be back with our now typical 3 clip + theme format for MJM226: Holiday Edition.

Welcome to the 224th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I've posted three clips this week -- these three clips share something in common. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the three mystery jam clips, and answer what the three clips share in common.Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint -- each guess should contain three songs / dates, and a guess at the commonality. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. The winner will receive an MP3 code good for a free download of any show, courtesy of our friends atLivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to @schvice, who wins his sixth (and likely penultimate) MJM, going back-to-back by identifying the seriously tricky 7/16/92 David Bowie, the 11/10/90 Possum, and the 6/30/94 Antelope, all of which were played in towns named "Richmond" (two in VA, one in IN). Which of the six time winners will get their seventh win and be forced into retirement first: @schvice, @WayIFeel, or @ucpete? Find out on Monday, when we take things up a notch in honor of MJM 225.

Welcome to the 223rd edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I've posted three clips this week -- these three clips share something in common. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the three mystery jam clips, and answer what the three clips share in common.Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint -- each guess should contain three songs / dates, and a guess at the commonality. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. The winner will receive an MP3 code good for a free download of any show, courtesy of our friends atLivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to @scvhice who won his fifth MJM by correctly identifying the 10/11/95 Mike's Song, the 3/31/93 Harry Hood, and the 3/11/90 Roll Like a Cantaloupe – he also noticed that all three of these jams have TV show theme teases in them. In doing so, he takes home yet another free download code – who's gonna take one home next week?

Welcome to the 222nd edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I've posted three clips this week -- these three clips share something in common. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the three mystery jam clips, and answer what the three clips share in common.Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint -- each guess should contain three songs / dates, and a guess at the commonality. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. The winner will receive two MP3 codes good for free downloads of any two shows, courtesy of our friends atLivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck!

Hint: Though you're certainly hearing Trey, Page, Mike, and Jon playing in these clips, you won't find any of the clips on PhishTracks...

Answer: Congrats to first-time winner @Hamphish, who takes home two codes by identifying the5/17/99 Voodoo Child (Slight Return), the 4/11/04 Chalk Dust Torture, and the 2/1/92 Tone Clone, in addition to figuring out the theme of "Jams where Phish played at another band's gig" (all shows took place, not surprisingly, in Vermont) -- in these cases, Phish with Russ and Tony from TAB, Phish alone after rotating one-by-one with the members TAB, and Phish with the members of Shockra. For those of you who may be asking "Who the heck is Shockra and why did Phish play a few shows with them?", you may be surprised to hear that Mike was taking lessons from Shockra bassist Edwin Hurwitz, a local expert in slap bass, and Mike was keen on adding the technique to his growing repertoire. See you in five days!

Welcome to the 221st edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I've posted three clips this week -- these three clips share something in common. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the three mystery jam clips, and answer what the three clips share in common.Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint -- each guess should contain three songs / dates, and a guess at the commonality. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. The winner will receive an MP3 code good for a free download of any show, courtesy of our friends atLivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck!

Hint:

Answer: For only the 15th time in 221 MJMs (6.8% W%), the Blog wins!

The Blog's record has now improved to 15 wins, 179 outright losses, and 26 hint-aided losses (plus thevoided MJM 214). The guessing crew was on the right track, but ultimately fell short. The picture of the Lidocaine ointment was a nod to the topical nature of this week's MJM -- note that it says "For Topical Use Only" on the label. The topic itself is Mr. Rogers Nelson, also known as Prince Rogers Nelson; this week's jams were played at shows during which Phish covered The Purple One: 12/31/98 Antelope("1999"), 12/30/94 Tweezer ("Purple Rain"), and 8/28/93 Stash ("Purple Rain"). Come back next week for MJM 222, where we'll play for two download codes.

Welcome to the 220th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I've posted five short clips this week -- these five clips share something in common. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the five mystery jam clips, and answer what the five clips share in common. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint -- each guess should contain five songs / dates, and a guess at the commonality. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday at approximately 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT. The winner will receive an MP3 code good for a free download of any show, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck!

Hint (3:08 PM ET / 12:08 PM PT):

Answer: Congrats to second-time winner @mickeyjoe86 who correctly identified the 8/31/12 CDT, the 9/5/15 CDT, the 9/4/11 CDT, the 8/31/14 CDT, and the 8/31/13 CDT, all played at Dick's in CO; one of the five songs (fingers) was from the FYF show, and "Chalk Dust Torture" is purported to be Trey's favorite Phish song. Stay tuned next week for MJM 221, back at the regularly scheduled time.

Among the many data elements on Phish.net, users' ratings of shows receive a disproportionate amount of critique. They are generic by design, suspected of some biases, and used differently by different users.* But despite their flaws, the ratings are still informative**.

We’ll start with an arcane issue: how show performance varies by day of the week. While some fans may love the Friday/Saturday blowout, many warn to “never miss a Sunday!”. Similarly the band’s “you snooze, you lose” mantra has emphasized that sparks happen in expected places on unexpected nights. An analysis of show ratings helps to consider each of these ideas, as well as to identify some interesting variations.

All at Once

First, let’s look at the ratings*** for all 1701 known shows. If we take the average rating for each show, and then average those averages by weekday, Sunday is indeed tops - with a mean average of 3.87 just edging out Friday (3.82) and Saturday (3.85). However, the averages alone don’t vary much, as the lowest (Monday, at 3.69) isn’t much lower. Meanwhile, variance (differences from the average within each group) do vary. So, let’s look at that...

Of those that have been rated, only a third have average ratings below 3.57, while a third have average ratings above 4.13. That’s stilted towards the high end, but still involves sufficient variation for comparisons. Or, treating the ratings as an indicator of performances, Phish shows are typically hot – but they’re not all equally so, and how hot they are varies, even across the week.

This stacked-petal polar chart**** uses red for the hottest third, and yellow for the bottom third. Each spoke within it illustrates how that day’s shows are distributed across these thirds. (Icons outside each spoke indicate how many shows happened that day and the average number of raters for each of them.)

If you lose by snoozing, it’s not on Monday: 41% of Monday shows are in the bottom third, while only 27% are in the top third – respectively, the highest and lowest proportions of any in the chart. Saturday seems least risky, with the smallest proportion at the bottom (28%); but Sunday more often had the highest payoffs, with the largest proportion (39%) in the top third. Of the rest, Friday fared best, while Tuesday and Wednesday were “merely” consistent, with about a third of each day’s shows in each third of all shows.

Travel Effects

For more stark differences, compare shows within and beyond the United States. The aggregate statistics for domestic shows are close to the above. But shows outside the U.S. have either been weaker or simply judged more harshly: The top third of them have averages as low as 3.78, while the bottom third have averages all below 3.17!

Distributions across the week are even more stark than single summary statistics. Mondays fare decisively “worse” both domestically and abroad. But the strongest nights abroad have apparently been Thursdays (43% in the top third, and only 14% at the bottom!), while the weakest have been either Sundays (with only 13% at the top) or Fridays (with just over 50% at the bottom!)

Across the Eras

Finally, compare the weekly distribution of show ratings, as it changes across three eras of Phish (as commonly distinguished, with divisions at the hiatus and breakup). Even 2.0 shows have been better than non-US shows, on average, with the top third at 4.04 and above. And 3.0 shows have tended to be rated higher than 1.0 shows by small margins, whichever summary statistic is used.

But, again, the distribution across weekdays is even more pronounced: While there were far more Friday and Saturday shows in 1.0 (1983-2000), the distribution of ratings was relatively consistent across the week.

In 2.0 (2002-2004), Wednesdays were apparently the bomb: Only seven shows, but 57% of them were at the top, while none were at the bottom. Finally, so far in 3.0 (2009-2016), Monday through Thursday have apparently been meh, with about half of the shows in the bottom third for that era. But only about 1 in 5 weekend shows fall in the bottom third - and nearly half of Sunday shows are in the top third.

The weekend blowout is back, and you definitely shouldn't snooze on Sundays - at least, not in the U.S.

Methodological Notes

* There are three known concerns about ratings, addressed briefly here and thoroughly in coming posts:

• First, the show ratings are a blunt instrument. Individual users might prioritize song choice(s), bustouts, overall setlist rarity, improvisational breadth (as a proportion of sound made at the show), improvisational depth (as variance from the composed notes, keys, rhythms, etc.), guest appearances, show length, venue characteristics, personal experience, esoteric characteristics or events, and/or other matters – if they discern with any clarity. Many judgements are more generalized, and some are more informed than others. Those differences are interesting - but measuring them separately would simply invite some form of combination, to provide an overall rating.

• Second, there are some purported biases in the data, such as that a show is rated higher by actual attendees (compared to those on couch tour or listening later), by those who've seen fewer shows (which presumes that n00bs are less discerning and connoisseurs more critical), or because it occurred more recently (both from n00b bias and from a rose filter critical of the past). Some of them could potentially be incorporated into our statistical summary, but each has been addressed in previous forum posts presenting data analysis that somewhat undermines the assumptions they entertain.

• Finally, there are known variations among raters: Some are more critical, giving only 4s and 5s, while others use the full range of available scores. The effects of differential use of the available ratings are somewhat mitigated by comparing relatively few categories, in the aggregate, across many hundreds of shows, from many thousands of ratings. Nonetheless, we are exploring variation among users and possibilities for standardizing scores per user. This blog post is the first in a series of analyses that have emerged from those investigations, and which illustrate a key point: Even without standardization, the ratings have valid meaning and uses.

** Despite flaws, the ratings are informative in three senses. Two are straightforward: They aggregate input from tens of thousands of users, about hundreds of shows. (Even the least discerning rater doesn’t give 5 stars to every show.) The third is empirical, and the point of today’s post: The show ratings are related to other variables of interest. That is, they may have predictive validity. (Similarly, you might critique DMV road tests, but they’re correlated with driving performance.)

*** All ratings data current as of April 8, 2016, at 1 a.m.

**** A stacked-petal polar chart (which might also be called a stacked circular column graph) is a dual variation on radar charts, using disconnected directional spokes, each with multiple values. (Here, bubble keys are also added for two additional variables.) Whereas the outwardly expanding widths of sector graphs (aka pie charts, et al) are subject to variable interpretation (by angle, arc, or area), concentric gridlines and series values are included here to emphasize that the salient aspect of spokes in these charts is length rather than area.

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Welcome to the 219th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. Like last week, I've posted three clips this week -- these three clips share something in common. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the three mystery jam clips, and answer what the three clips share in common. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint -- each guess should contain three songs / dates, and a guess at the commonality. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. The winner will receive an MP3 code good for a free download of any show, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to first-time winner @dbertsch who quickly identified this week's trifecta: 8/2/97 Down with Disease, 4/17/04 Halley's Comet, 8/15/15 Piper, and correctly noted that all three jams lead to segues -> Tweezer. I'm impressed that the guessing crew has taken down the new format twice in two weeks without too much fuss. We'll see if that changes next week, when MJM 220 drops at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET to give the can't .net at work crew a better chance at glory. Thanks for playing!