It had to be the best idea ever. "Let's build an arena and we'll stick it inside a shopping mall." For 1975, it had to make sense. No one who went to the Hartford Civic Center in 80's and 90's can forget the absurd collision of commerce that was the Civic Center. Buy some jeans at The Gap, have dinner at The Ground Round, and watch a monster truck show. What a night!

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Welcome to the 164th edition of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday Tuesday! This week's winner will once again receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. 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. Good luck!

Answer: @jmponder wins his third MJM by IDing the 7/5/98 Fee, a sloppy version in a sloppy show that nonetheless has a few unique jams worth listening to.

I'm pretty stoked to be writing a few words about this venue and equally stoked for the upcoming shows. Sometime by the end of the year, or if the cards don't fall right, perhaps the first part of 2014 Tour, I'll hit my 300th show. Tons of special memories of course. I've seen Phish perform in every place from dorms, college quads, fraternity houses, gin soaked college bars with 15 people attending and deserted clubs to hallowed halls to the country's biggest, grandest and most cherished venues. Yet, of all the special places I've seen this band- the Centrum ranks right up there among my favorite venues. Perhaps I'm one of only a handful of people that would make that seemingly bizarre claim and hold the venue in such high regard. What is it about the Centrum? Who knows. A cocktail of great memories with friends, remembering the band beginning to "hit it big", great musical moments, omnipresent electricity in the air, historical shows, and a large dose of home-town homerism has elevated this venue for me. Regardless of what regard you hold this venue, there's no doubting the importance it has had in Phish history or the many great musical moments that it has hosted.

Who knows: You may not even recognize the Centrum in Worcester, MA when you visit on October 25th and October 26th for the bands fifteenth and sixteenth appearances here. These shows keep this hallowed venue square in the top few of most played venues by Phish (and likewise the second most performed artist here). Let's get a few things straight before we roll up our sleeves. First off, it is, phonetically, "Woo-ster" not "Worchester". And like Deer Creek, The Boston Garden or Great Woods, it doesn't quite matter which corporate behemoth shelled out enough money to rename the joint. It will always be "The Centrum" but feel free to call it the DCU Center if you want. The venue has actually had a few different names over the years. We need to do a bit of house-cleaning here on Phish.net as we actually have the names incorrect. In 1993 when Phish first played here on New Year's Eve and in 1995 the venue was named "Centrum in Worcester". In 1997, it was re-christened "Worcester's Centrum Center" and in the 3.0 era, starting with their performances in 2010, it has been known as "DCU Center".

The venue, with a capacity of 14,500 and situated in New England's second biggest city, has an embarrassingly rich history for not only epic Phish shows, but also for scores of other bands. We'll look at 'Ten Great Moments' in Centrum Phish history after we look to the future. Despite some real high moments musically and historically for the band, the venue has also been marred with complaints. Most notably have been the lack of restrooms, the lack of concessions and the miniscule concourse space to accommodate the always sold-out crowds. So what's changed? Read on for the best of what's to come and the best of what's already been!

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Unlike the legendary Fall 2013 venues like the Hampton Coliseum which has seen 15 memorable Phish shows, including the 2009 reunion run, or the Worcester Centrum Center/DCU arena which has had 14 shows, many notable like the 1993 New Year’s Eve show with the “aquarium” stage set and the 11/29/97 “Runaway Jim” marathon, the upcoming show on Wednesday, October 23rd at the Glens Falls Civic Center will only be the second Phish show at that venue.

Of course, the first show, on Halloween in 1994, is one of the most well-known and loved Phish shows, where the tradition of playing a “musical costume” in a three set show on Halloween, since repeated five more times (in 1995, 1996, 1998, 2009 and 2010), began.

The Glens Falls Civic Center (yes, it's GLENS Falls, no apostrophe, folks, not GLEN Falls)

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Phish has previously played five shows within the city of Rochester proper, all occurring in odd-numbered years in the 1990s, oddly enough. The first took place on April 20, 1991, at the University of Rochester’s Douglass Dining Center during its annual pre-finals “D-Day” spring celebration. Having attended UR in the latter-half of the decade, during which Phish regularly performed in front of crowds numbering in the tens of thousands, I was awed that only a few years had passed since they held a concert in the small cafeteria I regularly ate meals at.

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What’s so special about Hampton? I joined in a discussion about this topic a few weeks ago, and there doesn’t seem to be a simple answer to the question. For sure, as venues go, Hampton has a number of marks in its favor, but none seem to provide a slam-dunk answer to the question: Why does Hampton Coliseum enjoy such legendary status for Phish fans?

(Photograph by Erik Axdahl)

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Welcome to Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday, Part 163. The winner will receive an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, you'll need to be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. 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: Kudos to another first-time winner this week, as @bostonron deftly identified the 8/11/04 Down with Disease.

"Ghost."

It's a wisp of a song, yet one of the band's most versatile canvases. It can become a melting reactor core, a V8 ghetto glide, a starship awakening in the cradle of a distant nebula, or a lurking menace. And 'tis the season: If Winter Phish is "Tweezer," Spring Phish is "Reba," and Summer Phish is "Bathtub Gin," then Fall Phish is surely "Ghost."

To mark and celebrate the onset of autumn, we want to hear about your favorite "Ghost." And this Ranker comes with a bit of a twist: we are letting our users start with a blank canvas. We haven't named a single contender . . . not that we could name just one if we tried. [Edit: Well, we had to name one to create the poll. What better to start with than the studio version?]

Please add your selection using this format: Ghost YYYY-MM-DD. Thanks!

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Welcome to Phish.net's 162nd Mystery Jam Monday! Because no one was able to ID MJM #161, this week's winner will receive TWO MP3 downloads courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, you'll need to be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. 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: In the penultimate 1.0-era show that contained the band's lone performance to date of El Paso -- a song also prominently featured in the opening scene of Sunday's Breaking Bad finale -- the 10/6/00 Down with Disease was identified by first-time and two-MP3 winner @itsice1. Great job!

If we are to trust the band as the arbiter of what is and what is not, there have been nine Phish festivals to date. Each of these events has been replete with surprises both on and off the stage. Among the more clandestine of these surprises have been a series of secret, unannounced, unrequited, undermined, and/or under attended sets of non-traditional Phish. Although, not officially a festival, this "secret set" tradition was originally to be initiated with a late night 4th set at Amy's Farm. Unfortunately, due to the arrival of some uninvited guests looking for trouble, the band pulled the plug and this late night set never materialized. Eliminating the elusive 4th set at Amy's farm from contention, we are left with the opportunity to determine the best of the non-traditional festival sets that are alleged to have occurred when many of us were not looking. Some of these sets are so secret, only Phish knows about them.

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This just in from Myke "@LawnMemo" Menio:

The third installment of our weekly Phish studio replay is on Tuesday, September 24, at 9pm e.t. at turntable.fm/thePhish. We will be replaying Junta from start to finish and will be including the outtakes (available on etree here). Come join us for a couple hours and re-live one of Phish's greatest albums!

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Phish.net Mystery Jam Monday iteration: 161
Prize: One MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net
Objective: To be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip
Rules: Each person gets one guess per day, with the second “day” starting after I post the hint on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday
Start time: Now

Hint: If Mr. Carey were judging this week's MJM, as of Tuesday at 9:27am ET, Mr. Monroe would have twice the money needed to win.

Answer: Several of you were able to figure out the hint -- as of the time it was posted, all submissions were past the date of the correct answer, so using "The Price is Right" rules (hosted by Drew Carey), since everyone else was "over", Bill Monroe's two-dollar bill would have been double the $1 it would have taken to win. Unfortunately for you, and fortunately for the Blog, only Contestant Emeritus @pauly was able to figure out this week's MJM: the 8/21/93 Stash. For the record, it was previously said that a more straightforward hint might be in order next time. For a mystery jam from the prominent month of August 1993, I'd say this was a suitable increase in clarity, no?

Stop by next Monday for a double-MP3 giveaway MJM!

Norton Charleton Heston. Bob Weaver. Henrietta.

Sneezeblood Eyeball.

Call him what you will, the truth remains: Jon Fishman is Phish's one, true, natural-born showman. Though threadbare of garment and hairbare of head, the man knows how to own a song like nobody else.

Pick one favorite Fishman tune? A fool's errand for sure. So we made it easier for you by including only those that have at one point been accompanied by HYHU. And, as usual, you can always click through and vote for (or against) more than one . . .

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Today marks the 160th installment of Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday. On the heels of a rare victory by the Blog, this week's winner will receive TWO MP3 downloads courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, you'll need to be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery jam clip. 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: First-time winner @Penn42 wins two MP3s, as he impressively identified the post-PYITE 2/13/97 Jam as this week's mystery clip.

Myke "@LawnMemo" Menio reports that the replay of Phish studio albums on Tuesdays continues at 9pm EST at Turntable.fm/thePhish.

Myke writes: "This week we will play The White Tape from start to finish. Boasting exceptional versions of 'Alumni Blues' and 'Slave to the Traffic Light,' and many rarities, The White Album is a lot of fun. Last week we replayed TMWSIY and had a great turnout and excellent conversation about the album. Many people checked out Turntable for the first time, and can't get enough of it. I hope you will join us this Tuesday!"

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