[We would like to thank Rob Mitchum for recapping last night's show. -Ed.]

Recapping the show before Halloween is a sucker’s bet. The narrative of any fall tour with a costume set capper inevitably becomes defined by whatever Phish chooses to do with that holiday show. Like a well-constructed mystery novel, once you know the twist ending, it’s rewarding to go back and spot the clues you missed your first time through. But any speculation about the 31st I make today will almost certainly have an expiration date of, oh, 72 hours or so.

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Welcome to the 349th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the final and most difficult single clipper of October. 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, a hint will be posted. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Have fun!

Hint: I guess you could say this clip was chosen in homage to Fall Tour having some great first set jams.

Answer: WinRAR! This week, the guessing crew wandered deep into the woods of this cruel joke of an MJM, but only @MikeThong was able to fight his way out thanks to his trusty golf cart. This week, he hits the trifecta by identifying the clip as from the waning moments of the twisted 11/29/98 "Limb by Limb" -> "Catapult" -> "Kung" sequence, played during the first set of the last night of Fall Tour '98 – Twenty Years Later indeed. Stop by Monday, because I ain't givin' no goddamn Loch Ness Monster a LivePhish code for MJM350!

Five years ago on October 27, 2013, Lou Reed died at the age of 71, depriving the world of one of its greatest poets and bonafide Rock and Roll Animals, not to mention a huge inspiration on one Ernest J. Anastasio III. I first learned about this at a burger joint in Wethersfield, CT en route to the Phish show in Hartford that evening, and proceeded to confuse my companions by openly weeping into my iPhone. Phish proceeded to open that Hartford show with an 11 minute version of the Velvet Underground classic “Rock and Roll,” followed by a rare Trey request for a moment of silence for ‘one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived.’ The rest of that concert would live up to Lou’s challenge, as did most of Fall 2013. Now five years removed from that very date, how would Phish respond on a Saturday night in Chicago?

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[We'd like to thank Nick Williams, user @TwiceBitten, for recapping last night's show. -Ed.]

They say you should never miss a Sunday show, and while I wholeheartedly agree that you should miss as little Phish as possible, I think in recent years I’ve come to realize that Friday has been delivering at an equally high level as the Lord’s Day. I’d say we should leave Tuesday out of this just in case anyone reading decides to start going to weekday Phish shows when they should be at work or school or whatever. Come to think of it, seems to me that this band plays pretty darn well on any day that ends in "day." Feel free to click the links above to make the determination for yourself. Can there really be only one and where does that leave us anyway? In a relatively-old-school, all-blue, wooden-ceilinged venue just outside of Chicago on Friday 10/26/18 it would seem.

Would Phish continue the T.G.I.F. trend by delivering an all-out banger? Would Phish’s first run of indoor Chicago shows in seven years be enough of a spark to blow the whole fireworks factory sky high? Would it be one of those shows that satisfies the whole fan base, from the rail riders who waited all day just to give Trey a very special note, to the wooks on the back of the floor who just want to spin and flail with as few impedances as possible?

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Beyond the Pond is a bi-weekly podcast in which Brian Brinkman (@sufferingjuke) and David Goldstein (@daveg924) use the music of Phish as a gateway to introduce the listener to many other bands, the vast majority of which are not jambands. An episode generally begins with a deep dive into a designated portion of Phish improvisation, and then can spin off to any variety of musical themes and other acts, the overarching purpose being introducing the listener to as many new and different bands as possible.

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[phish.net would like to thank Alaina Stamatis (@farmhose) for this recap -ed]

Back in 2016 I was hanging out in the park next to Ascend Amphitheater during the day before the Phish show. It seemed like the only place in Nashville where you could charge your phone and buy weed from a homeless person. I met someone named Fish Taco (F-I-S-H T-A-C-O tattooed on his knuckles) who promised to find us some grass. As we waited long hours with him for his dusty connection to arrive, I became skeptical of anything he had to say. He bragged that beautiful women buy him fifths of whiskey and cuddle in hammocks with him, and I struggled to mask my disbelief.

“Man, you should have been here at 7 this morning,” Fish Taco announced. “This big tour bus drove through the park, pulled up right over there. And Bob Weir poked his head out the window and said, ‘Hey, kid!’”

The weed, the whiskey, the women had all seemed fabricated. But deep down I knew that if anybody was going to call Fish Taco a “kid,” it would be Bob Weir. And as we all know, Fish Taco rewarded my faith in him with a surprise appearance from Bobby that night!

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[we'd like to thank Nick Lowe, @rockinhorn, for recapping last night's show from Nashville - ed.]

As far as outdoor venues Phish performs at, Ascend Amphitheater lives near the top of the list. The size and intimacy here bring a special feeling to everyone in attendance, and certainly create an excited anticipation as to what the band is going to blow our minds with in such a small setting. Ascend has quickly gained a lot of attention in Phishdom since the storied 2015 return of “Mike’s 2^nd Jam” and the 2016 guest appearance of Bob Weir. For obvious reasons, Nashville shows seem to elevate the possibility of guest artists joining the band. Or at least in the minds of us phans. There was a bit of pre-show chatter about Vince Gill having just finished some tour dates with The Eagles. “Maybe he’ll show up to play some Eagles tunes?” To those comments I could only think one thought. “I’ve had a rough night, man, and I hate the f#@&ing Eagles, man!”

The air was crisp, and the vibe was super excited on a gorgeous fall evening in Nashville. The earlier ticket time threw some of us for a bit of a loop. This on top of a long wait to get through security (metal detectors) created a little more pre-show anxiety than normal. Though, once inside, it was immediately apparent why this venue is so special to those who have experienced it firsthand. The feeling of sitting in the band’s lap is shared by all in attendance, whether in reserved seats or lawn.

The house lights went down at 7:36 p.m. and the beloved foursome hit the stage exploding with excited energy, Trey with his familiar ear-to-ear smile. Without any hesitation they laid into “Tweezer Reprise” and the audience erupted. Much anticipation revolved around this since it was left on the table from Hampton. Would they play “Reprise” at all?

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Rock Bottom Chicago is once again fundraising for Mockingbird, this time in connection with this weekend's Rosemont shows:

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There are two ways you can view Phish shows—through the experiences, and through the music as it exists as an artifact after the show. As Phish fans, we go to shows to collect experiences, to have good times with our friends and family, and of course, to see great music. Sometimes, we go and we realize that the experience was great, but that the music doesn’t hold up quite as well later. Sometimes, the opposite is true. And sometimes, both things align and the Phish world is in a state of satisfaction and bliss. Hampton 3 was one of those nights.

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Welcome to the 348th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the fourth of five October single-clip MJMs. 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, a hint will be posted. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Have fun!

Note: No n00b head start this week, so don't dawdle!

Answer: Despite digging into the often-untreaded waters of early 1.0, our blog's challenge was no match for the ears of @experiencechuck! He made mincemeat of our selection - the 6/4/09 Ghost, and for his efforts he has received a LivePhish.com download code. Stay tuned for next week - despite being a single clipper, it'll still be a hardest-of-the-month challenge, so get your ears prepped for a toughie!

Only one other large indoor venue stacks up against the Hampton Coliseum in terms of relevance to the band’s history through the years. From their first stop there in 1995, Phish has crafted an awesome reputation for greatness within the round room off the Hampton Roads. It was no fluke that the band chose the space for their return in 2009, and from the moment it was announced, this run has been seen as an important destination event for many fans, the third straight three night stand coming five years after their last visit.

Actually, while we’re using numbers... on the second night of their tenth year at The Mothership (the endearing nickname fans have given Hampton Coliseum, due to its resemblance of the spaceship from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"), Phish performed their twentieth concert in the hallowed space. The numerological unlikelihood that this would be also be the 20th day of the 10th month of this year is surely just insignificant and coincidental. However, we Phish fans are certainly a very superstitious lot.

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[Thank you to user @Jsauce, Josh Martin, for the recap. -Ed.]

Greetings from Hampton, everybody. Glad to be back with you all. Truth: I listened to a lot of Phish last summer. I hit the live phish app pipe so hard I thought my brain was going to bleed. A break was in order and a break was had. It was nice to come back to tour feeling hungry for the music.

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[Thank you to user Aaron Presuhn for stepping up and recapping last night's show. -Ed.]

Fall tour. Indoors, dark, intimate, a completely different vibe than outdoor summer Phish. It was a chilly day, but the Times Union Center was HOT. Night one was amazing, and it set the tone for what I thought to be a great, well-played set of shows.

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[Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, an ordinarily reliable, clear-headed member of our team, and both a trusted and highly esteemed colleague, had so much deleterious fun at this fall's tour opener in Albany that he was mentally and physically unable to "recap" the show for this website. We therefore respectfully request that YOU "recap" the show in the Comments section below, but only if you attended it, lest you offend the more sensitive among us who believe a recap lacks credibility if the recapper is recapping based strictly on listening to a recording or viewing a webcast. -Ed.]

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Welcome back to From the Tapers’ Section! As in previous editions of FTTS, I've pulled some choice Phish performances from my catalog of tapes and performed some tasteful post-production work on the recordings to optimize the listening experience. But unlike previous editions of FTTS, instead of working on and sharing an entire show, I've followed the Live Bait model and am sharing a compilation of jams that @ucpete lovingly calls Stash the Wumbo. Like the jams featured in Kevin Shapiro's series, these jams were played in the same venues and locations the band will play during the upcoming Fall Tour, but unlike Live Bait, all the recordings featured in this compilation come from high quality, fan-made audience ("AUD") recordings. There’s a lot to digest here, so let’s dig in:

Albany, NY: 10/9/99 "Ghost," 12/1/03 "Tweezer"

Phish has a history of throwing down at Times Union Center (née Kickerbocker Arena, later known as the Pepsi Arena): the monstrous "Seven Below" -> "Ghost" from 11/28/09, the famous "You Enjoy Myself" with silent jam from 12/9/95, the culmination of cow funk from Fall Tour ’97. As this series is as much about embracing AUD culture as it is discovering the recesses of Phish’s catalog, I present to you two gems I never see discussed. Fall ’99 follows hot on the heels of a stellar summer tour; instead of the intense and fiery grooves of Summer ’99, the band patiently explores quieter ambient pastures in October ’99. The back half of this "Ghost" jam is a perfect example, as the band jumps into the deep end and propels us through a cloudy haze. To contrast this soft blanket of oozing warmth, I have yang’d the yin with the throaty 12/1/03 "Tweezer." This "Tweezer" has tense, aggressive bark throughout as waves upon waves of psychedelic teeth match Trey’s unabashed and compressor-free tone.

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