Anytime somebody joins the [Trey Anastasio] band I try to get to know everything about them. What's their favorite run, what keys do they like to play in, are they a natural soloist or natural support person? And then create a space in the band for them to be themselves.

It's the Mystery Jam you've all been waiting for. 69, DUDES!! 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). The hint will come on Tuesday and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Good luck...

Tuesday Hint: Ok, most of you seem to have realized it's not Phish. But no one has guessed the song yet, let alone the version.

Wednesday Answer: For the first time in over six months, the Blog is a winner!! Ok, admittedly, it took a TAB MJ to do it, but I can live with that. The jam in question came from the 10/23/06 "Night Speaks" (a show that is absolutely worth checking out in full, FWIW). Your regularly scheduled MJ will return on Monday, when we will be playing for TWO LivePhish downloads.

MP3 Downloads Courtesy of LivePhish.com.

Greetings and welcome to TAB week here at Phish.net. As you most likely know, Trey will be kicking off his Fall Tour on Saturday at Higher Ground with an additional Vermont Flood Recovery Benefit show. What you may not know is that, as we hinted a mere seven months ago, the Sideshows section of Phish.net is becoming more fully developed with each passing day. Just in time for TAB tour, we’ve reached a pretty significant milestone. Every known TAB setlist has now been entered into the site (note: offer does not apply to G.R.A.B., Trey’s orchestral shows or other solo Trey performances, though they will be coming just around the corner). TAB setlists have been thoroughly vetted and verified by the team of @lumpblockclod, @pzerbo and @bizarro_jerry. But wait, you may be asking, is there more? Hell and Yes! TAB song histories will soon be coming to a non-profit, fan-run Phish website near you. In fact, what’s that down there? Well, that was quick.

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Way back when, when people connected to the Internet through 2400 baud modems and walled garden programs, Phish shows were traded exclusively via snail mail. Rec.Music.Phish allowed Phish fans from all over the world to post their tape lists, and all it really took was a few emails to find someone willing to offer up a B+P (“blanks and postage” for those of you from the digital age). I’m sure there are many people who remember the exciting day when a package finally arrived in the mail, smelling of cigarette smoke, filled with Maxell UR 90’s, or maybe, if you were lucky, a long show filling up a couple of XLII 100’s. Well, I remember those days, and I remember my first one of those days in particular, when I received a copy of 8/21/87 in the mail.

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The online music service Spotify has taken the US by storm since being made available in mid-July 2011. It boasts catalogs of music from most of the major labels and some independant and smaller labels as well. In addition, sites like digster.fm, ShareMyPlaylists, and Rhinofy have made it easy to find great playlists and become exposed to all sorts of music you have never heard of as well as music you have not listened to in years. One of Spotify's great features is the ability to share playlists and subscribe to other playlists very easily. The Facbook connect feature gives you quick access to all of your Facebook friends' playlists which you can listen and even subscribe to.

Phish has quite an extensive selection of music available on Spotify. Any of the livephish.com shows that have been re-released in remastered form are there, as are all of the other official live releases like Colorado 88, Live at The Roxy, Vegas 96 and more. The entire original Live Phish CD series is there as well, all 20 shows.

To make it easier to discover what Phish is available on Spotify, I have created some playlists that are public and can be subscribed to. There are also a couple of Phish-related playlists that exist and I have included links to those as well. Two of them are collaborative playlists, which means any user can add tracks to it.

Here are the links for my Phish Spotify playlists:

Phish Studio CDs

Live Phish CD Series

LivePhish.com Releases

Official Live Releases

Phish Halloween "Musical Customes"

Phish Covers (a collaborative list of cover songs Phish has played live)

and here are some playlists that are Phish-related, or created by someone else:

The Covers of Phish (collaborative playlist of original versions of songs Phish has covered, created by Thomas Meyer)

Phish Soundchecks (created by Drew Hitz)

Bunny Radio Tracks from SuperBall IX (created by Eric Wyman)

Phish Covers (songs Phish has covered, created by FeeTheProdigy)

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For the 68th week in a row, the Blog has a Mystery Jam on tap. 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). The hint will come on Tuesday and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Good luck...

Tuesday Hint: No hint needed this week...

Wednesday Thursday Answer: It was the 5/26/11 "Waves" from the Bethel tech rehearsal. Congrats to jerrytimber for being the first to guess it. MJ69 coming Monday...

MP3 Downloads Courtesy of LivePhish.com.

"A few songs into the first set, a funny thing happened: My pad stayed in my pocket for longer stretches. I put my phone away and stopped sending messages to the newsroom. Deadlines and leads slipped from my mind. I forgot, for a time, I was on assignment. That’s a very unusual thing and a better way to listen to music — and there was some good stuff to hear Wednesday night at the fairgrounds."

Reporter Sally Pollack, from an article in the Burlington Free Press (9/18/11).

I was very pleased and very appreciative for the cooperation of the crowd. They were very pleasant to deal with. I’ve been in the business for 33 years, and I can’t ever remember dealing with a crowd of that size that was so pleasant to deal with.

All right, raise your hand if you're gonna miss Couch Tour!

This event, as absorbed via the Information Superhighway in my computer chair, must have been wonderful to attend. Even the webcast was permeated with a sense of community and homecoming, and it's just a shame that it took a horrendous force majeure to make it happen. If Phish is playing, I'm either there or wishing I were, and this was most certainly true tonight.

Of course, it was the kind of night (last announced show this year, rumors afloat about another mini-or-quasi-hiatus, first show in Vermont since Coventry, loose and loping soundcheck) that stirs up disproportionate and even mythical expectations among fans. Tonight's show, while entertaining, was a reminder that expectations are best kept small.

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It goes without saying that with Phish's benefit concert coming up on Wednesday in Essex Junction, all eyes in the Phish community will be squarely on the flood ravaged state. If you purchased a ticket to the show, pre-ordered the webcast or made a donation to The Waterwheel Foundation, take pride in the fact that you have indeed already helped the people affected by Hurricane Irene in Vermont. Only a mere two and a half weeks since Irene ran its path through central New England most Vermonters are still busy cleaning up. The funds raised by Phish will be massive and go a long way over the long haul finding its way into the hands of various Vermont organizations helping in relief efforts. Recovery from this storm will take months, not weeks. That being said the state is already showing signs of rebuilding with business and community resources coming together and getting people and places back on their feet.

If you're heading up to Vermont on Wednesday and are interested in taking the extra step and helping just a little bit more, there are ways through very small commitments of money and time that you CAN make an additional difference.

I spoke directly last night with Matt Sisto of the grassroots organization #VTresponse. He explained how relief and clean up efforts are still very much "day-to-day", focusing on the areas and sites that need the most attention as they come. He and his crew of volunteers are hard at work utilizing the generous resources from people in Vermont and beyond. So while you might not be able to get organized into helping clean up waterlogged areas (if you wanted to stay the rest of the week, I bet they'd find a spot for you though) there are small things that can go a long way to work that is being done RIGHT NOW.

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It's Monday, and, as usual, the Blog has cooked up a Mystery Jam (all while taking in ten straight hours of NFL action; lesser men might have folded under the pressure, but I managed to pack it all in). 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). The hint will come on Tuesday and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Good luck...

Tuesday Hint: Alas, no hint needed this week...

Wednesday Answer: 8/12/98 "Ramble On." Congrats to ghostboogie on the win. See everyone on Monday...

MP3 Downloads Courtesy of LivePhish.com.

You just read their recap of buying tickets, now Dusty and Brando from CashOrTrade.org are announcing a ticket giveaway for Wednesday's show in Vermont! Thanks to these guys for such an amazing offer!!

From CashOrTrade.org:

In an effort to continue helping by doing our part, CashorTrade.org is GIVING AWAY 2 TICKETS for Wednesday to 2 lucky fans who help support and build the face value ticket fair trade community.
Go to http://cashortrade.org/vtbenefit.php for details.

Read on for more info about CashOrTrade

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