It's time for another edition of Phish.net's Mystery Jam ... er ... "Monday." For roughly the one hundred and fifty-eighth time, here's the scoop: be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip and win one MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday Wednesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday Thursday. Enjoy!

Hint:

Answer: The Blog snaps its seven-game losing streak, but only due to eking out a hint-aided loss, as first-time winner @kozb4209 quietly submitted the correct answer: the 12/28/96 Mike's Song. Well done! Given the Blog's appalling 10-133-15 record, you'll have to forgive me for the obscureness of the pretzel-related hint, and it sure didn't help us win this one. MJM will return on its regularly scheduled day next Monday.

Greetings sports fans and welcome to the final Phish.net recap of the 2013 Summer Tour. The tour has been a strong one, both in terms of strong jams (first and foremost the Tahoe "Tweezer" but also the PNC "Crosseyed," Hollywood "Hood" and Saturday's Dick's "Chalk Dust") and consistently well played sets (the second sets from Jones Beach, Gorge2 and SF3 particularly stand out). What's more, in 2011 and 2012, Phish saved arguably their best set of the Dick's run for last. Regardless of your view on the merits of comparing one Phish show to another, the band has played some undeniably strong shows at Dick's. Would Sunday night continue the tradition? Lets dive in...

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With night one’s hit-&-miss prank in the books and the band liberated from the need to spell something, it’s back to business as usual for night two. When you’re talking Phish Dick’s, of course, business as usual can prove to be unusually potent. Let’s get right to the action.

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Along with more traditional venues such as Hampton and MSG, Dick’s has in a few short years established itself as another “home court” for Phish, with this being the third consecutive three-night Labor Day weekend run. It is well established that Phish love Dick’s, in fact we ALL love Dick’s. It has been another long night and busy day for the phish.net team here in lovely Colorado, so we’ll proceed in the “express review” mode today.

Most Shows Spell Something.

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Back by popular demand this week: Phish content!

I'll preface this installment by outing myself as an unapologetic fan of The Phish Ballad. I love the band's approach to the song form over the decades. I love the punctuation they provide in the right context. And I love the way Phish's ballads show off the band's grasp of harmonic movement and dynamics.

We gave the staff here at Phish.net an opportunity to rank their favorite original Phish ballads across the breadth of the catalog, and below the fold you'll find our top 10. As usual, please feel free to add your own over at Ranker.com (instructions below the fold).

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National Geographic published an interesting article discussing why humans may have invented music, and it includes a reference to Phish concerts. An astute Phish fan, Blanca, brought the article to our attention and you can read it here.

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Welcome to Part 157 of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! Here's the deal: be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip and win one MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck.

Answer: @ucpete wins this week's MJM by IDing the 7/12/03 Maze, possibly the only one that verged into "Type II" territory. Well done, Pete.

Quick programming note: MJM Part 158 will be posted on Tuesday.

IT is not a science. The exquisite transcendence that one can experience when moved by music, such as during the concluding sections of the July 31 Tahoe "Tweezer” for example, is not quantifiable. But whether you enjoy music with, or without, analytic doses of dates, timings, ratings and stats, Phish's Summer Tour gives you plenty to ponder, and even more for which to be enormously grateful.

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Thanks to our community for the response and feedback to last week's inaugural "Best Jams of Summer" poll. Predictably, it was a cakewalk for the Tahoe "Tweezer," with the PNC "Crosseyed" and the Hollywood "Hood" placing and showing.

But hey, we were the real winners. In fact, we had so much damn fun we decided to do it again.

This time, since we're doing some fine tuning with Clark and team at Ranker, we thought we'd keep it light. As it happened, we recently got our hands on the lot vendor roster for Dick's, and suffice it to say you may wish to... eat before arriving...

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Welcome to the 156th edition of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! As always, the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip will win one MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Time to open wide them earlids and get crackin'...

Answer: Making it three consecutive first-time winners, @Mike_Thong came up with the correct answer in an impressively short amount of time: the 6/8/12 Roses Are Free. One of the most commonly-stated misconceptions Phish fans seem to have is that there was a time in Phish's history when the band would regularly add an extended jam to the ending of Roses. However, out of the 40 times Phish has played the song, the 2012 Worcester version is only the third of three such renditions, following the Island Tour and Big Cypress. So think about that before the next time you lump Roses in with songs neutered in the 3.0 era like Bag, Halley's, Tube, and Mike's.

Comparing, contrasting, and ranking is a rite of fandom. We do it instinctively, compulsively, as an expression of our devotion. The staff here at Phish.net embraces it internally, and now we'd like to invite our users in on the game.

With help from our friends at Ranker, we're glad to introduce a new blog feature called Phishing Poll Thursdays, which will give you the opportunity each week to rank a list of our choice -- some serious, some not-so-serious, and some downright absurd.

We kick off today with a topic that's on everybody's tongue during this brief respite between the standard issue summer tour and the coda of Dick's: your favorite jams of summer so far. Below the fold, you'll find a self-explanatory widget where you can register your favorites, and we encourage you to defend and debate your rankings in the comments section. We've started you off with our list of serious contenders, but you can feel free to add your own if you feel we've given the short shrift to a jam you love.

Ready, set, go!

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As you all might know, August 1993 is one of the more hallowed months in Phish history. There was a palpable shift in the type of music Phish was making that expressed itself in more exploratory jams, increased risk-taking, and a big payoff from years of listening exercises, day-long practice sessions, and maturing songwriting. I was fortunate enough to see some of these great 1993 shows and the memories have stuck with me to this day. On this, the 20th anniversary of 8/13/93, one of the first shows where a particular song came to define a moment, I hope you will indulge me in a bit of reflection.

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Welcome to Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday Part 155! Per usual, the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip will win one MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!

Answer: Another first-time winner -- @HarborSeal was able to identify the jam played during the 11/16/95 Band Chess Move. Well done!

See you Monday for numero ciento cincuenta y seis.

The Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery in Chicago held a series of fundraisers, during their Summer Honey Tapping Party, in conjunction with the recent Phish shows there. Rock Bottom donated funds to the Mockingbird Foundation for every pint of their “Sample” beer sold over the weekend, and served it in special mason jars emblazoned with the Foundation logo. Co-manager T.J. Catalini also organized a raffle, live music, and more! Foundation board member Charlie Dirksen attended on Friday, as did Foundation volunteers Kevin Hoy on Friday and Scott Marks on Saturday – and, of course, many other Phish fans, including perhaps you.

The Mockingbird Foundation has now received a check for $1,101.50 raised from CraftWorks Foundation, which handles the corporate giving for CraftWorks Restaurants & Breweries Inc.’s 250 restaurants under multiple brands. We appreciate everyone for their support of music education. In particular, we want to thank TJ, as well as Angie Leach and Michelle Jones of CraftWorks. We hope that we can do it again the next time Phish is in town - and look forward to seeing even more of you there!

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