Happy 2012, Phish fans! Apologies for being tardy with this better-late-than-never recap, though we assume many of you were also raging/recovering/traveling. Perspectives on the first three shows of the run up to NYE varied widely from total love to moderate puzzlement to mild disappointment. To be fair there has been something to justify all of those opinions; as always, the only opinion that should matter to you is your own. Let’s walk through the action as we finish our trip around the sun and flip the calendar!

A compact and rollicking “AC/DC Bag” gets the NYE show on the road, followed swiftly by “Wolfman's Brother” with a strong if brief type-I jam. Solid if uneventful versions of “Scent of a Mule” and “Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan” keep the high-energy opening sequence flowing, before dropping down to the NYE stand-by breather “Lawn Boy,” making its seventh NYE appearance. “Gotta Jibboo” and “Farmhouse” then settle the set into a more sustainable groove.

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Happy New Year and welcome to the 80th installment of the Mystery Jam Monday series here at Phish.net. Hope everyone had a great time at the shows and/or on #couchtour. As usual, we will be playing for a free 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...

Wednesday Answer: Congrats to Phshrman for correctly ID'ing the 7/30/03 "Scents and Subtle Sounds." If you haven't heard this version, or the whole show really, you should absolutely seek it out. It's a scorcher, "Secret Smile" encore and all. The Blog will be back on Monday with another Mystery Jam.

Anticipation grows with each passing night of Phish’s annual new year’s run. Each night also carries with it the weight of past glories. December 30th holds a special place in Phishstory. On 12/30/93 the band played one of the greatest shows of their career to that point and a show that still holds up eighteen years later. A year later, Phish made their Madison Square Garden debut. The highlights of 12/30/97 are almost too numerous to mention: among them a mesmerizing “AC/DC Bag,” an epic “Harpua,” and two bustouts of “Sneaking Sally.” It’s possible the fog still hasn’t cleared from the 12/30/99 Big Cypress “Mike’s Song” and, more recently, 12/30/09 is one of the finest shows of the band’s 3.0 era. So expectations always run high on December 30th. Sometimes those expectations are met, and other times... not so much.

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Thursday night Phish took the stage at Madison Square Garden for the second of four shows to close out 2011. After a first night where most people had very warm reviews, the second night seems to be a bit more puzzling. After a series of passionate emails among staff here at Phish.net last night fits somewhere comfortably between "amazing" and "frustrating." I mean, we certainly used both words with great frequency but upon further review it's hard to pick which end of the level has more weight. I can probably name more "good" moments than "bad" but for some reason I'm left feeling a bit conflicted. Why is that?

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Alongside the storied Phish traditions of Halloween and the summer festivals, the New Year’s Eve run of shows are the most eagerly anticipated by fans in any year. When this run takes place at Madison Square Garden – the world’s most famous arena, in the epicenter of the Phish fan base – the level of pre-show hype is practically off-the-charts. Performing their 20th show at MSG tonight, it is like entering their own post-season, after a very successful year. Three and a half months off their last performance – 9/14/11, the benefit for Vermont flood victims – and on the heels of a strong end to the last tour including several strong performances in Chicago and Denver, would Phish come exploding out of the gates? Or would the “marathon not a sprint” mentality give us the proverbial warm-up show? The turnstiles crank on 7th avenue, while couch tour nation settles in at home. Let’s do this.

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We join in mourning the loss of fellow fan Victor Harris.

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My love of music—particularly live music—led me to Ticket Masters, but the type-A, business geek in me ended-up being just as satisfied. Budnick and Baron hit it out of the park with a multi-faceted piece that moves seamlessly between interesting anecdotes, thoroughly researched facts and rich, colorful presentations of characters that at times feel more supernatural than non-fiction. The result is a book that I not only recommend highly to the core readership of this blog (rabid music fans), but also to business folk I interact with in “my other life”.

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"In the last few weeks, nearly every warm-blooded American who’s ponied up for a big-ticket event in the 21st century has received an email alerting them to a proposed settlement of a lawsuit against Ticketmaster few had ever heard of.

Particularly in the wake of Ticketmaster’s controversial merger with concert promoter Live Nation two years ago, the near-monopolist has earned a poor reputation for its high online purchase fees and bad relationships with venues and consumers. While the settlement may offer a measure of public retribution for its unhappy customers, it’s not going to line their pockets—but it might be a wake-up call for a troubled industry."

-Good magazine (12/13/11)

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Welcome to the MJM79 here at Phish.net. As usual, we will be playing for a free 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...

Wednesday Hint and Answer: The Hint is that if RabeldyNugs takes a guess, that's probably the right answer. It certainly was this week, with the 7/1/98 "Disease." Congrats, once again, Rabeldy. The Mystery Jam will be taking Xmas off, so see you all in 2012...

The following is the text of Page's senior study from Goddard College. It was first "kindly made available to readers of the net" in 1992 by then-fan (later employee) Shelly Culbertson, who posted it to the then-nascent Phish.net mailing list, and is now reposted 19 years later in celebration of the 24th anniversary of its submission.

THE ART OF IMPROVISATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Goddard College
Page McConnell
December 19, 1987

At the age of four I began taking piano lessons. For the next twelve years I studied with four different teachers. They attempted to teach me to read music, a skill I never fully developed. My dyslexic tendencies made the process very difficult and a good ear made it easier for me to play by ear. In my early years of lessons I had no problem playing the pieces that were assigned to me as long as I had heard my piano teachers play them for me. As the level of difficulty in the pieces I was playing increased, I was forced to learn how to read. I struggled with the process and didn't entirely enjoy it, though the ones that I did learn stretched my technical abilities. The most difficult piece that I learned was Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag."

During my ninth grade year I stopped taking piano lessons. It was during this next stage of my playing that I began to really enjoy playing. Obviously this was because I was playing for myself, not for my piano teachers or parents. I spent much of the next year listening to rock albums, playing what I heard, and taking my improvisation more seriously. Often I was just improvising the voicings to the songs that I was playing, but my ability to do blues improvisation increased also. My first introduction to the blues was a book I received in first grade called Jazz and Blues for Beginners. This book introduced me to blues progressions. These are progressions that alternate between the 17 and the IV7 chord and generally end with a V7-IV7-17 progression. Both rock and jazz find their roots in the blues, and in fact rock has never really left. The majority of rock songs written are a variation on the 17-IV7-V7 progression. Many do not vary at all.

I suppose that my main motivating factor for practicing during my high school years (other than the fact that I enjoyed it) was that...

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David Calarco, a.k.a. “Mr. Miner,” is perhaps the most well-known Phish blogger. Since 2008, Dave has been blogging about Phish on his very popular Phish blog, http://phishthoughts.com/, though he got his start writing about the band in 2000, reviewing Phish shows from Japan (and elsewhere) for JamBase.com. Dave's opinions on shows are highly regarded by many fans and, whether you enjoy reading his work or not, "Mr. Miner" knows his Phish, having seen hundreds and hundreds of shows since his first show in 1995. As you likely have already heard, Dave has published a 600+ page book, Mr. Miner’s Phish Thoughts, and he agreed to speak with me about it. It is available for purchase here, and it would make a great gift for the Phish fan(s) in your life. Happy holidays. -charlie

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Welcome to the 78th Mystery Jam Monday here at Phish.net. After the Blog's triumph last week, we will be playing for TWO MP3 downloads this week, 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...

Thursday Answer: According to our setlists, it is the "Jam" out of the 12/12/97 "Caspian." So, we have two "correct" answers, each given within 7 minutes of the other. What to do, what to do? Well, as luck would have it, we have two downloads to award this week, so the Blog is unilaterally declaring the first Mystery Jam Monday Co-Champs... Congrats, ghostboogie and Blackeyedsloth. See you all on Monday.