On July 16 and 17, 2013, Phish will return to the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park for their third twin bill at the summer home of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO). The amphitheatre, owned by the ASO parent organization Woodruff Arts Center, features a 7,000 seat fan-shaped roofed pavillion and low-angle lush green lawn that will accommodate an additional 5,000 fans that are in turn encircled by some of the heritage trees that are characteristic of the larger 45-acre park in which the amphitheatre is set. The amphitheatre will be enjoying its sixth summer concert season since opening in May 2008. The Woodruff Arts Center in turn, is completing its 45th year since being established in October 1968 as the Memorial Arts Center in memory of over 100 of Atlanta’s arts and civic leaders lost in a June 1962 crash on takeoff of Air France Flight 007 (a Boeing 707 named The Chateau de Sully) as it departed Orly, France. This crash, represented the first civilian jet disaster with greater than 100 deaths (130 total); making it the worst single plane disaster at that time, the third worst air disaster overall through 1962, and the catalyst that changed Atlanta’s modern cultural history forever.

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Welcome to the 148th chapter of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! Per usual, if you're the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery clip, you'll win an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Each contestant 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 following on Wednesday. Enjoy!

Answer: The Blog woefully waves its white flag this week. Despite the majority of its 34 seconds consisting of crowd noise, with a few scant seconds at the end vaguely inferring the return back to Foam, @yunkfunk was able to ID the 12/4/94 Foam. The Blog promises to appease the masses, and will at least try to stick to a more traditional, mostly-audible clip for Monday's upcoming one-hundred-and-forty-ninth Mystery Jam.

Merriweather Post Pavilion. As any Northern Virginian, current or former, would tell you: I love it and I hate it. I went to several shows there, so I loved the proximity, but hated the traffic and the parking. Now, if you narrowed it down to just Phish shows, I'd immediately think of one moment: the 8/8/98 Sabotage encore. There's a great story there, but it's not the one I'm going to tell today.

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When I think about Phish, one of the very first things that comes to mind is New York. I know they’re not a “New York” band and have their roots in Vermont and New England, but it’s impossible to discuss even a cursory history of the band without intertwining the band’s glorious history there. Phish has unquestionably put their stamp on the Empire State playing every nook and cranny of the state from college quads and campuses in the early years to tiny clubs and rooms like Aiko’s in Saratoga, The Chance in Poughkeepsie, The Haunt in Ithaca, The Wetlands in the City and Clement’s Brew Pub in Syracuse. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, Phish was performing to 70,000 fans at one of the most awe-inspiring festivals ever seen at the Clifford Ball in Plattsburgh, to some of the world’s grandest stages in Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall (and everything in between in New York City). Having played nearly 100 different venues in New York, Phish has performed there more often than any other state with Vermont being a not-that-close second. (California & Massachusetts round out the other top four).

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Holmdel, New Jersey’s PNC Bank Arts Center was my hometown venue and will forever be close to my heart. Growing up in tiny Hazlet, about 45 miles south of New York City, we usually had to travel into the Big Apple or up to The Meadowlands to see big acts unless it was summer. The Garden State Arts Center, as it was called from the time it opened in 1968 until PNC Bank bought the naming rights in 1996, was a mere mile from the house where I grew up and each summer would host a wide variety of musical acts. As a tot my parents took me to see doo-wop revivalists Sha Na Na at the shed, which was one of my first musical experiences and over the years I saw dozens of concerts there.

Bands such as the Allman Brothers Band, the Steve Miller Band and Santana would seem to visit each summer and even if I couldn’t afford a ticket that night, I was still able to hear the music quite well from the parking lot. From the time I was nine I would go away for eight weeks each summer to sleepaway camp which certainly cut into my Arts Center-going opportunities. That never phased me much until 1994, when I found myself entering a passionate love affair with the music of Phish.

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It’s hard to process the fact that July 6 will mark the passage of thirteen years since the last time the nation of Canada – or any land outside of the Unites States, for that matter – hosted a Phish show. A variety of theories abound to explain the lengthy embargo, from previous border-crossing difficulties, to Trey’s probationary terms stemming from his December 2006 arrest, to the band’s devotion to Dunkin’ Donuts and utter contempt for Tim Hortons.

Regardless of the actual reasoning, it will come to an end a mere three days following that milestone. That roar you vaguely remember coming down from north of the border this past winter? Well, okay – it was almost certainly the celebration of professional hockey’s return from yet another labor stoppage. But there’s a slim chance it was the long-neglected Canadian contingency of Phish fans cheering the announcement of the upcoming July 9, 2013 show at Toronto’s Molson Canadian Amphitheatre.

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Welcome to Part 147 of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! (Give or take a day.) As usual, if you're the first person to identify the source of the mystery clip, you'll win an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Each contestant gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Wednesday if necessary, and the answer will be posted on Thursday. Good luck!

Answer: You know, it's getting awfully hard to fool the MJM audience. By knowing that this week's mystery jam came from the February(-ish?) 2004 jam at the Barn featured in Undermind's bonus DVD doc, "Specimens of Beauty", first-time winner @j_led deftly wins this week's MP3 download. Guys, gals, don't be appalled if next week's selection ends up being a silent jam.

See you Monday(-ish?)!

From the editors: For the second installment of our Summer Tour Venue Revue, the editors of Phish.net wanted to extend an invitation to Myke Menio (aka @lawnmemo) whose project The Daily Ghost chronicled every live version of Ghost and now is running his own recap of Summer 2012 in a project entitled 33 in 33 featuring a different writer every day. We're excited for his perspective of his home venue in his first piece at Phish.net!

Following the tour opener in Bangor, Phish takes a break on Independence Day before traveling to one of their favorite venues. After closing out Leg 1 last year, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, “SPAC” is the first three day run of 2013. If history is any indication we should be prepared for just about anything.

When I was asked to write the SPAC piece I wasn’t sure if I was the most qualified person to do so. After I accepted, I figured I could pull it off. I mean I wrote 113 Ghost reviews and I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Then I sat down and started to think about what might make for a good review.

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PHISH will open the Summer Tour on July 3 in Bangor, Maine. It has been almost twenty years since they played there, and in anticipation of the upcoming tour, we at Phish.Net will endeavor to revisit past Phish performances in cities and towns that the band will play this summer. In this first installment, I revisit the November 2, 1994, show in Bangor, the “Tweezer” of which was the first “experimental” version to both exceed 30 minutes and conclude with a return to the "Tweezer" theme. The highlights of that day and that evening I have not forgotten, and shall not soon forget.

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Regular visitors of our good friends over at PhanArt may have noticed a significant milestone on their charitable donations list: with a $100 donation from Zuckerpinz on May 18th, total donations to The Mockingbird Foundaton by PhanArt and their Friends now tops $10,000. On behalf of all of us here at the Foundation, and in the name of all the grants and programs these donations help us to support (including running Phish.net), we thank PhanArt Pete and the entire PhanArt community for your ongoing generosity.

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With exactly one month left to wait for Phish's 2013 summer tour opener in Bangor, we bring to you the 146th episode of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday! To give the readers who can't participate during standard 9-to-5 work hours a fair shot, we've posted this one a bit later than usual. To win an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net, be the first contestant to correctly identify this week's song and date. Each contestant gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Let's get this show on the road!

Answer: Second-time winner @morgentown wins this week's MP3 download by knowing the 11/11/88 Whipping Post. Once again, the MJM contestants show how tough it is to stump them.

New MJM in five days. New jams to choose from in twenty-eight.

There are just 30 days left until the start of Summer Tour 2013. To kill time before the start of tour, @lawnmemo has started a project he calls 33 in 33, where 33 different writers write about a single jam (or run of songs) from each show of Phish's 2012 Summer Tour. The first two entries are already live (written by Phish.net contributors @ericwyman and @tmwsiy) and are well worth your time. Presumably the third will be posted shortly (covering Bonnaroo, but don't let that stop you). If this project is half as good as his The Daily Ghost reviews, we're all in for a treat. So bookmark his homepage or follow him on twitter for each day's post as we all countdown the days until Bangor. Just a month to go, folks.

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On Wednesday, May 22, Trey Anastasio revived his orchestral repertoire with the National Symphony Orchestra Pops at the 2,446-seat Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington, D.C., for his only scheduled orchestral appearance in 2013. Anastasio was joined by NSO principal pops conductor Steven Reineke, performing orchestrations by Don Hart.

“First Tube” led off the show, as it had in all six previous orchestral performances, excepting it’s symphonic debut on 5/21/09 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra when it closed the first set. Trey appeared extremely loose as he enthusiastically leaned into the first of his solos of the night, rushing ahead of the orchestra before settling into a sustained groove. The Anastasio/Marshall composition “Frost” from Trey’s 2012 release, Traveler, offered the only orchestral debut of the evening, with Trey delivering a sweet and delicate vocal performance.

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Welcome to the 145th chapter of Phish.net's Mystery Jam, er, "Monday." Just like your local clichéd classic rock FM radio station, this will be a true "Two for Tuesday" edition, as you'll be playing to win TWO MP3 downloads courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first contestant to correctly identify this week's song and date. Each contestant gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Wednesday if necessary, and the answer will be posted on Thursday. Good luck!

Answer: A pair of MP3s goes to first-time winner @viola, who successfully identified the 6/19/09 A Song I Heard The Ocean Sing. Well done!

T-minus three days until MJM Part 146...

Welcome to the 144th edition of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday. You should all know how the story goes by now -- the first contestant to correctly identify this week's song and date will win an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Each contestant gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Gentlemen, gentlewomen, start your engines...

Tuesday Hint: Being familiar with the longest version of Gotta Jibboo that Phish has played to date can help you determine which year this week's MJM comes from. Be warned, however -- this hint is not as straightforward as you might think it is.

Wednesday Answer: It seems that the hint was as hard to solve as the MJM itself! You were very close to solving that part, as @ekstewie1441's comment mentioned that the 7/4/00 Gotta Jibboo was the answer for MJM #96, and '96 was indeed the year that MJM #144 comes from -- the 7/9/96 Mike's Song to be exact. Because the answer to MJM #144 was not mentioned in the comments, the Blog is this week's big winner with its ninth victory in 144 tries, but its second in the last five.

Next week's 145th chapter of Mystery Jam Monday will be held a day late due to Memorial Day, for which contestants will be competing to win a pair of MP3 downloads. Enjoy the holiday weekend, everyone!