Joyous holidays, phanners! I’m excited for the opportunity to recap tonight’s show for two reasons. First reason, redemption: I could film myself caulking cracks in my driveway and it would surpass the recap we published for last night’s show. We do try to bring the content when you need it most, but we came up short this time. Sorry about that. Second, remembrance: tonight is the twentieth anniversary of 12/29/97-- my first Phish show at the Garden.

More on that later. First, the goods.

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Phish.net is a project of The Mockingbird Foundation and is run by volunteers. If no one volunteers to write a recap, it is not written. No one volunteered to recap last night's show. We encourage you to visit Jambase and read Andy Kahn's recap. My two cents? A fine start to the run, with some tasty improv in "Tube" and "BOTT" in the first, and substantial, exploratory, at-times-magical improvisation in the ~40 minute "NMINML">"Twist" that's worth your time to check out. And everyone wins with the first-ever "Wedge" "Slave" encore (and first "Wedge" encore since 1995), a wonderfully unpredictable conclusion to Phish's 14th show at MSG this year. Stay warm out there, and please support LivePhish, as Phish donates a portion of its profits to Mbird.org. -$0.02

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[This post is courtesy of Phish.net user @swittersdc – ed.]

Ever used CashorTrade? Ever wanted to hear the perspective on how it was built, how it’s growing, and how they’re dealing with more demand than ever? Then please check out this week’s episode of the Helping Friendly Podcast, where we interview Brando of CashorTrade and talk to him about all of this and more—including his own Phish journey.

We also talk about and play Set 3 from 12/31/93, which is of course a great way to get into the MSG run spirit.

We appreciate you listening, and you can review and subscribe to the Helping Friendly Podcast on iTunes, or listen through the player below. The HF Pod team is me, @mdphunk, @rowjimmy and @brad10s. Thanks for your support!

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Welcome to the 305th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the most difficult of December and the final MJM of 2017! 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 three mystery clips, which are connected by two completely unrelated themes – one around which I crafted the puzzle, another I noticed after the fact, neither of which need be identified to answer correctly (though as usual, it usually helps). Each person gets one guess to start – if no one guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday. Good luck!

Note: As mentioned (and flub'd) in the MJM304 wrap and in today's preamble, this is the final MJM of 2017. I was curious when the last time the MJM took a break, and really didn't grasp how long the streak has been till just now: today's MJM makes 80 consecutive Mondays with a puzzle. With the various tournaments and different flavored contests in between, we’ve listened to 225+ jams during the streak – and that's just since June of last year! An entire spreadsheet of LivePhish codes has been won by you all, in addition to copies of TPCs 1-3, posters, etc. – this all despite the increasing difficulty of the puzzles (the blog has only won six times in the past year and a half). I’m not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but I really appreciate this small but thriving jam-nerd community in our corner of the internet, and I wanted to wish everyone the happiest of holidays. We’ve all earned next week’s MJM off. To those headed to MSG – have a blast! The MJM will return on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018. – pete

Hint: Apologies for the delay – the MJM will be extended by two hours (if needed) until 12 PM PT / 3 PM ET tomorrow.
Updated: I'm in a giving mood and it's feeling a little stump-y out there, so I'll clarify the hint a little more.

The songs in these clips have been played in succession at least once. And at most once.

Answer: Another 'W' for Wumbo indeed – that's four in a row and six since August for @wforwumbo! Impressive; most impressive. As mentioned in the comments, this week's puzzle was jams from songs that form the "Leo Trio," i.e. the songs during which you're most likely to hear Trey say "Play it Leo!". There weren't many options for "NICU" and "Rocky Top" (especially the latter), but I was able to piece together a tricky final puzzle of the year. But with my giving mood and the extra hinting, it was no match for @wforwumbo, who correclty identified the 12/1/94 "NICU," the 12/13/97 "Ya Mar" (here's my SBD copy from the third Super Ball FTA broadcast), and the 12/15/99 "Rocky Top." Only after I had made the Leo Trio MJM did I notice that I had selected three December jams. Funny how that worked out... Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year! See you next year...

Welcome to the 304th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the second and second-easiest of December. 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 both mystery clips, which are connected by a theme. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday. Good luck!

Answer: For the first time in MJM history, someone has gone back-to-back-to-back. @wforwumbo continues on his collision course to MJM glory, taking down his 5th win overall by idenitfying the 6/25/95 "HYHU" > "Jam" and the pre-"Fleezer" 6/22/95 "Theme from the Bottom" -> "Jam," two "Jam"s from the same week in late June '95. Looking ahead, I see that MJM306 would fall on Christmas Day, but ain't nobody got time for that. Instead, next week's MJM will be the last of 2017, and we'll pick back up on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018. MJM305 drops on Monday... will anyone try to stash the wumbo?

Dr. Stephanie Jenkins of Philosophy School of Phish fame was recently interviewed by Engaged Philosophy, click here to read it.

Unfamiliar with the Philosophy School of Phish? Check it out.

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[This post is courtesy of Phish.net user @swittersdc – ed.]

The team at the HF Pod couldn't let the 20th anniversary of the Fall '97 tour pass us by without spending a bit of time reflecting on the shows. This week on the podcast, we revisit the Philly shows from that historic tour, from 12/2 and 12/3. We play decent chunks of both shows, and reflect on what was, maybe, the best tour Phish has ever played.

What do you think? Weigh in via the comments section below!

Also, the HF Pod team will be recording a live podcast at American Beauty on 12/29 before the MSG show. This is part of the PhanArt show. Come say hi. Festivities start at 3 p.m.

We appreciate you listening, and you can review and subscribe to the Helping Friendly Podcast on iTunes, or listen through the player below. The HF Pod team is me, @mdphunk, @rowjimmy and @brad10s. Thanks for your support!

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Trying out a thing here on Phish.net. A new, occasional series of essays/posts from phans who are either in academia or have an intellectual bent.

While Phish was broken up, some fans used the time to go to grad school. There are plenty of fields where a die-hard Phish fan might find an academic home. In addition to more established fields like ethnomusicology, popular music study and media studies, did you know there is now a field of study (interdisciplinary in nature) known as fandom studies? (You can check out the fairly new Journal of Fandom Studies online.) There’s even a term, “aca-fan” (it’s clunky, to be sure), used to describe fans (of, really, anything) who are also in academia.

This essay is from Jnan Blau (self-professed aca-phan). He’s a tenured professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, in the Communication Studies Department. He got his Master’s and Ph.D. at Southern Illinois University, specializing in performance studies and intercultural communication, and actually wrote his doctoral dissertation on Phish and what he terms “the Phish phenomenon.” In a nutshell, he theorizes the hell out of Phish and phan culture, articulating how and why what they do onstage is so special and powerful, and how this radiates into the audience to become a thriving culture that mirrors and extends what Phish accomplishes through their music. Jnan is one of the first to publish about Phish in peer-reviewed academic journals - check out some of these papers here. This piece was written recently (in, according to him, a flash of inspiration), and his first impulse was to share it with us. We do hope you’ll check it out and enjoy it.

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Kelly Morris (@BirdsWerds), the creator of the "More" video, has released a beautiful new video, inspired by "Rise / Come Together." If you would like to support her work (e.g., by helping cover the cost of removing the "Adobe Stock" watermark from this film), please visit https://www.gofundme.com/risecometogether.

Welcome to the 303rd edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the first* and easiest of December. 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 guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday. Thanks for playing!

*Reminder: For the first MJM of each month, only folks who have never won an MJM are allowed to answer before the hint. If you have never won an MJM, please answer as a blog comment below. If you have previously won an MJM, but you'd like to submit a guess before the hint, you may do so by PMing me; once the hint has been posted, everyone should answer on the blog. If that's confusing to you, check out the handy decision tree I threw together to help guide you. If you're not sure if you've won before, check in the MJM Results spreadsheet linked below.

Update: We have a winner by PM... will announce tomorrow.

Hint: Congrats once again to @wforwumbo, who is hell bent on breaking the record for the fastest to go from first win to MJM Emeritus status. This week he recognized the extra percussion and extra guitar, was able to quickly identify the 7/3/15 "Playing in the Band" from the Fare Thee Well shows put on in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. Is anyone brave enough to step in front of the Wumbo Train, or will he hit Lucky #7 before NYE? Find out next week when MJM304 gets weird...

Welcome to the 302nd edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the last and hardest 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 song and date of the three mystery clips, which are connected by a theme. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday if the puzzle hasn't yet been solved. Good luck!

Note: Here's a SoundCloud link for any suffering technical issues:

Answer: Congrats to @wforwumbo on his third win in three months – do we have our next MJM Emeritus rising through the ranks? Or will one of our other multi-MJM winners break through first? For this week's puzzle's answer, it's time for a (recent) history lesson, as some may not know:

After what was perceived by some fans as writers' block, and many previous albums being mostly Trey and Tom collaborations with one or two songs sprinkled in from the other bandmates, the band scrapped their old approach and began a collaborative songwriting process in 2013. For inspiration, they began by rooting through Mike's notebooks (in which he writes about each show) for recent jams he felt were particularly cool. They relistened to those jams and the cool sections Mike noted, excised their favorite bits, and reshaped them into songs that debuted on 10/31/13 as Wingsuit – see the 2013 PhishBill here for the band's take on that songwriting process. I chose three of those reshaped jams for this week's MJM:

- the 8/19/12 "Light" had a section that was written into "555" – that particular section was played publicly only once, during the "555" debut on 10/31/13, but left on the cutting room floor for the album and all subsequent versions
- the 9/14/11 Soundcheck had a section that became "Fuego," and other sections that may have been the genesis of "Wombat" and perhaps even "Wingsuit," as @My_Powerful_Mind points out
- the 8/12/10 "Drowned" had a section that became "Waiting All Night"

The theme for this week's MJM is "jams that became songs on Fuego / Wingsuit." Thus concludeth your history lesson. See y'all on Monday for MJM303, where things get easy and less verbose once again.

...get something nice for the Phish fan in your life — perhaps a nice pint of Phish Food? — because apparently they, more than anybody, care enough to save you and your Netflix addiction.

[Fan Keith Eaton, @Midcoaster, is contributing a piece to the blog for the first time. He first became obsessed with music when, in 1979, he sat in a darkened theater and watched Apocalypse Now. Nothing was ever quite the same after that opening sequence.]

After 30 years, I have to honestly ask myself, "Is this devotion?" That word, devotion, sort of goes against everything that I thought was irreverent in me all these years. Sort of. I mean, devotion is a weird thing. Many Americans marry but don't even want to acknowledge devotion, as it sort of conjures demeaning levels of servitude despite horrid conditions. (We opt for divorce rather than weathering the storm more often than not.)

30 years of fandom, though, whoa. But it's never that. It's never a straight line. There was no sense of devotion during my irreverent (or so I thought) late-1980s self. There was this cool band that I saw, Phish, and they were nice dudes. They were dudes with whom I could talk about music when their set was done, slathering on my love praises for the SST and Touch and Go labels, even though I looked every part the slavishly devoted Deadhead. Let me explain.

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Welcome to the 301st edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third and second-hardest 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 song and date of the three mystery clips, which are connected by a theme. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one guesses correctly, I will post a hint on Tuesday around 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET, after which each person gets one more guess before I reveal the correct answer on Wednesday. Good luck!

Note: Sorry for the delay today – everything will be shifted back by about 7 hours this week (hint, end of MJM) to give folks time to track down these... tracks.

Soundcloud link: If you're having trouble hearing all three clips, you can listen here.

Hint:

Answer: Congrats to @Patwich on his first win! While other folks closed in on the answer, @Patwich saw right past the "Harry Hood" red herring and the "opener" hint to identify the 7/1/14 "Harry Hood," 9/27/95 "Harry Hood," and 11/18/09 "46 Days," all of which were played during tour opening shows. Special thanks to MJM Emeritus @WayIFeel, who for the second straight week recommended some killer jams for use on the blog. See you at MJM302!

Twenty-six years ago today, Lee Silverman posted the first Phish.net Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) File. It's evolved over the years - up and out, to an unwieldy 500+ pages of cruft; and slowly back to a more tidy but still in-need-of-attention ~100 questions currently. But when Lee started it, it was just the following twelve (provided here with links to select, current, relevant resources):

1. How do you pronounce Junta?
2. What are they saying in "You Enjoy Myself"?
3. Can you give me some basic background info?
4. How do I post to the Phish-net? Change Subscription?
5. What is The Helping Phriendly Book?
6. Is it a Fat or Furry creature from Mars?
7. What is "Mike's Groove"?
8. How do you pronounce "Guelah Papyrus"?
9. What are the really early albums and what songs are on them?
10. What's Trey's real name?
11. How are Phish related to the Grateful Dead?
12. What is a tape tree and how does it work?

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