In or near NYC? Looking for something phishy to do in the brief hiatus between the NYE run and Riviera Maya? Consider heading to the City Winery on Saturday, January 9.

Writer Wally Holland, with whom I recently spoke about his new book, will be discussing Phish's music with journalist/artist Mike Hamad and musicologist Jake Cohen. Phish's music will also be played at the symposium, and Mike will even be "live mapping" some of it.

This event, sponsored by Blank Space Media, will also be webcast by Relix, and Wyllys will perform a short DJ set. In addition, Wally will be signing copies of his book, and Mike will have setlist map prints of MagnaBall's "TweezerPants" available for purchase as well. For more information, please see:

FB Event Information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1043674135683604/

City Winery Ticketing Link: http://www.citywinery.com/newyork/blank-space-presents-a-live-one-an-interactive-musical-discussion-w-author-walter-holland-1-9.html

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Welcome to the 202nd edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. The winner will 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 if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!

Answer: I saw it again! By correctly (and obscenely quickly) identifying the 2/21/03 Mike's Song from the US Bank Arena in Cincinnati, OH, @yunkfunk has won his seventh Mystery Jam Monday, and will now join the other MJM emeriti and is prohibited from participating henceforth. We'll be back next week with another crunchy jam, so stay tuned!

Welcome to the 201st edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. The winner will 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 if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to @yunkfunk, who by identifying the "Julius" from Brad Sands's wedding on September 6th, 2008 -- the only known time Phish played together in front of a crowd between Coventry '04 and Hampton '09 -- wins his sixth MJM, and thus, his sixth free MP3 download from LivePhish.com. Never in my life had I been more excited by a low-resolution 90 second YouTube clip of a band playing a song I'm not particular fond of... One more win and @yunkfunk will be pushed out on the icebergs to float away with the other emeriti!

If you're unable to stream the above audio properly, try the SoundCloud link here.

Welcome to Phish.net's Mystery Jam Monday Part 200! As we did when MJM hit the century mark and the CL mark, the winner will be awarded an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net, along with an additional prize. For MJM #200, the kind folks at the Mockingbird Foundation will be giving the winner a copy of each of the three editions of the The Phish Companion: TPC1, TPC2, and the soon-to-be-released TPC3!

Regarding the Mystery Jam itself, as with MJM #100, #150, and the Hampton/Winston-Salem MJ, this clip has multiple songs on it that you'll need to identify. Therefore, we will not be using the comments to guess this week. Instead, send an email with your guesses (for all of the clips) along with your .net username to [email protected]. If you have any questions, you can post those in the comments section. Do not post guesses in the comments section, or your comment will be deleted and you'll be subject to banning from future MJM participation. Also, no "trading" of answers is allowed: figure this out on your own. The first person to correctly identify the song and the date of each jam will be the winner. One guess per person per day, with the second "day" starting after I post the hint. A hint will be posted on Wednesday if necessary, and if necessary, again on Friday, and the answer will be posted by next Monday. In the event that no one guesses all of the Mystery Jams, the winner will be selected by the Blog at its sole discretion -- partial credit can take home the prize, so don't be shy. Note the number of blank slots for this week's contest in the MJM Results spreadsheet, and be assured that each of this week's jams has not been used previously. Good luck!

Juicy Hint: The clips are in chronological order, and no two clips come from the same year. Also, there are no clips from 1.0.

Update: I still haven't received any submissions, so if you know even one of the jams, you could be the winner come Sunday if you send it in and no one else does. I'll accept submissions up until the end of the Sunday Night Football game, or approximately 8:30 PM PT / 11:30 PM ET.

Final Mega Hint:

• Three of the jams were played in July and three of the jams were played in August. The other four jams were all played in different months -- different months from one another and different from July and August (e.g. January, February, March, April would meet this requirement). Add the numerical representation of all the months together and you get 79. Do the same for the days of the month and you get 172 -- also, half the jams were played in the last week of the month, and three of the jams were played in the first week of the month.
• Four of the jams were played in the state of New York and two of the jams were played in the state of Wisconsin. One of the jams was played in a state where recreational marijuana use is now legal, but this jam wasn't played at Dick's. Two of the remaining three jams were played in (ocean) coastal states; the third state accesses the coast only via river.
• Three of the jams come from songs that are covers, two of the jams come from the same Phish original. Three of the jams come from songs debuted in 3.0, one of the jams comes from a song debuted in 2.0, and the other six jams come from songs debuted in 1.0.
• One of the jams comes from a song on Junta, one of the jams comes from a song on Billy Breathes, one of the jams comes from a song on Story of the Ghost, two of the jams come from a song on Farmhouse, one of the jams comes from a song on Round Room, and one of the jams comes from a song on Joy.
• Eight of the ten jams are on the Phish.net Jam Charts, but I didn't write any of the descriptions. Three of those eight jams are "Highly Recommended".

To download a .zip file containing each of the clips as a separate MP3 track, click here.

Update: Congratulations to @LucyDarkstar24, who managed to correctly identify all 10 clips and send his correct answer in before anyone else. In doing so, he not only wins a free MP3 download code, courtesty of LivePhish.com, but he wins all three editions of The Phish Companion! A hell of a prize for a first-time winner. Even though I dropped some seriously juicy hints, this was no walk in the park. Major props to the other folks who managed to identify them all too: @garcia17, @ChalkDustTeacher, @mcnastycasty, and @12_29_97_4eva. I hope you had as much fun as I did! Find the answers in the MJM results spreadhseet, and check back in the morning for MJM Part 201.

We recently re-discovered this word search, designed in 2000 by Pete Sitzman - a friend, Phish fan, and Phish Companion contributing photographer, who passed away in 2007. The puzzle never made it to a flyer or website, until now.

There are 83 Phish-related words hidden forwards, backwards, up, down, and diagonally. See how many you can find:

Amys farm, Anastasio, Antelope, Bathtub Gin, BBFCFM, Bouncing, Bowie, Clifford Ball, Contact, Dirt, Dog Log, Driver, Esther, Faht, Fee, Foam, Forbin, Free, Gamehendge, Ghost, Glide, Golgi, Gordon, Greenberg, Groove, Guyute, Hampton, Harry Hood, Helping Friendly Book, Hoist, Horn, Hot Dog, HYHU, Ice, Jon, Junta, Landlady, Lawn Boy, Lizards, Llama, Maze, Mike, Moma, Mound, Nectars, NICU, Noel, Oswego, Page (twice), phans, Piper, Possum, Poster Nutbag, Reba, Rift, Ruthaford (sic), Simple, Sleeping Monkey, Sloth, Stash, Stash (twice), Suzie (sic), Tela, Timber ho, TMWSIY, Tom Marshall, Trey (thrice), Tubbs, Tube (twice), Tweezer, UFO, Wedge, Weekapaug, Weigh, Wilson, Yamar, YEM

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As an alternative to its traditional online auction format, the Mimi Fishman Foundation has introduced a “buy it now” donation format featuring posters from the Phish 2015 summer tour. The official show limited edition posters are signed by all four members of Phish - wonderful gifts, for yourself or someone else.

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Hungerthon is an annual Thanksgiving radio tradition started in 1975 by WhyHunger to raise awareness about hunger and poverty and to invest in long-term solutions that help people in need in communities across America. To support this important cause, Phish has generously donated a pair of tickets for the four-show NYE run to the Hungerthon Charity Auction. While you're getting stuffed this fine Thanksgiving day, why not satisfy your hunger for New Year's tickets and bid generously.

Several other Phish-related charity auctions are currently underway at Charitybuzz, so check these out and bid high while doing good:

• Trey has donated a pair of Phish tickets and pre-show party passes for the 1/1/16 MSG show, to benefit the David Lynch Foundation.
• Win a lunch with RLM Manager Patrick Jordan (who manages Phish, Trey, Ween and more), to benefit HeadCount.
• Win a lunch with SiriusXM Jam On host Jonathan Schwartz (host of Gone Phishin'), to benefit HeadCount.
• Win a lunch with talent buyer Don Strasburg (the force behind Phish's shows at Red Rocks and Dick's), to benefit HeadCount.
• And for the big one...win a lunch with Andy Gadiel, founder of Andy Gadiel's Phish Page, to benefit HeadCount.

These auctions all end soon. You guys know the drill: bid early, bid often, and support some really great causes!

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@FrodoPiano is a 12-year-old composer who grew up listening to lots of Phish, thanks to parents who are fans. That exposure inspired an arrangement of 22 Phish songs (plus a reprise) in a mammoth 269-measure medley, his 45th posted score. You can hear and watch the arrangement here (or visit the host page to read his introduction), followed by a short Q&A with the prolific songsmith.

Phish Medley by FrodoPiano

How many Phish shows have you seen, and what was the first?

I have seen Phish some six times, and I have seen Trey with an orchestra twice, at the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. My first concert was on November 1, 2009. When I was younger, I listened to Rift a lot, as my dad had a copy that he kept in the car, so you could almost say I “grew up with it,” which might be why I am a bit biased toward it. ;)

What’s your favorite Phish song, and why?

I don’t want to sound cliche, but my favorite has to be "Divided Sky". It has so many movements, with so many great themes, and I love all of them. (It was also apparently the song my mother wanted to hear instantly after I was born, so maybe that means something …) My favorite albums, though, are Junta and Rift.

How long have you been composing, and why do you enjoy it?

Well, first of all, I’d like to make clear that I certainly did not compose this, and all writing credits go to the members of Phish, respectively. However, I do compose regularly, and I have been for … say … 4-5 years now. I really like it because there are so many possibilities, and so many different concepts and ideas to explore. For example, I just learned about polyrhythms, so I just did an “experiment” to see how they worked within a piece, and that turned into my 6th prelude! I actually compose more than I arrange, and I’m now working on a piece called "Sinfonia Pangaea", one called "Song of Life", and the score for a friend’s game, of which the opening piece is called "Solitaire."

You’ve also written a seven-movement suite, somewhat inspired perhaps by Holst’s “The Planets.” Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, somewhat going off the idea of The Planets (which I love, and have seen in concert), and The Four Seasons, I decided to write a suite entitled The Days of the Week. At first, I realized that the seven days could correspond with the seven musical modes (Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aiolian, Phrygian, and Locrian), but I decided against it, both to give myself more compositional freedom, and to prevent writing in Locrian, what with “resolving” to a diminished chord being … difficult. If you want to check that out, it’s here, and my favorite movements are "Wednesday" and "Friday."

What role has music education played in your life?

Music has, among other things, given me something to think about. There are so many different concepts in theory, and they’re so thought-provoking that you could spend ages just thinking about them. Also, if I’m ever stressed, I can just start snapping out a cool rhythm (or polyrhythm), or come up with a new theme or concept for a piece. It’s also just a lot of fun! Composing, for me, is a great outlet for creativity, because there are always new … possibilities, and new ideas that can be made reality through composing. I have also played piano for almost 6 years, and I just started playing the oboe.

Why did you arrange for this particular dectet, and for what other ensembles have you arranged or composed?

To be honest, I don’t completely know. I guess I just wanted woodwinds, and I chose some, and came out with this double wind quintet (with handclaps, because no performance of "Stash" is complete without handclaps). The bassoons are extremely versatile, and, in this case, work great as Mike’s part, throughout the medley. Other than that, different instruments get the melody throughout the medley, sometimes multiple kinds of instruments, sometimes just one. However, whenever an instrument gets a melody, both of the players of that instrument get the same part. In fact, only in certain harmonic cases do the two players of each instrument get a different part than their “counterpart.” Some instances of this are "Divided Sky," "Rift," "The Lizards," etc. Other ensembles I have arranged for include a piano with a violin and a cello, a piano with two violins, a piano duet, and solo piano. I have composed for many ensembles, including: solo piano; piano four hands (that’s four hands on one piano); violin and orchestra; oboe and bassoon; solo oboe; brass sextet; string quartet; guitars and an accordion; along with other small ensembles.

What songs did you not include, and why?

Well, that’s a long (and, in some cases, unfortunate) list, but there are good reasons behind most choices. The most common reason, of course, is that I can’t include every Phish song - that would take hours of music. Another reason is that some songs didn’t really … fit anywhere very well, and by the time I was wrapping the medley up, they just weren’t there. The third reason is something some of you may have noticed already - there’s no percussion! This was, frankly, an odd choice on my part, but I prefer, in general, composing with very little percussion, which typically doesn’t pose much of a problem. Now, for an arrangement of Phish songs, this gets a bit tricky, and on some songs, typically the “rock-ier” songs, this got a bit too tricky, so I left some out. Now for some reason, while I was arranging the medley, I completely forgot about "Fee," which would have worked, and now I’m really mad at myself.

What other adjustments did you have to make without a drummer?

Let’s face it - Fishman is amazing, and none of the songs sounded as good without him. But, both by choosing (mostly) more melodic songs and by laying down a clear rhythm with the bassoons, it wasn’t too hard to get a beat in there. As for the handclaps, you can’t do "Stash" without handclaps, and I decided to use them in "Mound" too. On the topic of "Mound," it provided a new problem in terms of rhythm, because of its polyrhythmic intro, which happened to be all I used. It’s just a simple 3:4 polyrhythm, but without a percussion section to lay down a beat, I had trouble keeping it sounding like a polyrhythm, and not just a time change. "First Tube" also has a polyrhythm, but that one wasn’t as hard to lay down.

You mention choosing more melodic songs. What can you say about what that excludes - songs you’d otherwise like to arrange, how you’d describe them, and where Phish’s arrangements lean, if anywhere?

This excludes, as I said, the “rock-ier” songs, meaning the songs that are more rock-and-roll(-ish), or more Fishman-heavy. This might include "Chalk Dust Torture," "Run Like an Antelope," "Weekapaug Groove," (dare I say) "Meatstick," etc., which unfortunately are some of Phish’s greatest songs, but would not be a good use of precious time in this arrangement, because they wouldn’t sound nearly as good with only woodwinds. Some of these might be fun to arrange if I added, maybe, some percussion/brass, and maybe strings or keyboards for fun.

Are there any Phish songs you would NOT want to arrange, or that you think are beyond re-arrangement, either by a woodwind dectet or otherwise?

Well, that’s a difficult question, but the one answer that comes to me is "Also Sprach Zarathustra." This is simply because it was arranged to be a Phish song, so to re-arrange it would be silly.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I know, this MIDI patch sounds awful, but hey, if one of you knows a woodwind dectet who’d like to play this, go ahead! (Just credit me.) :)

Shouldn’t you be playing with a ball or getting a job instead of poking a keyboard?

No.

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Welcome to the 199th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. The winner will 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 if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to @yunkfunk for nailing this one within an hour of my posting it, collecting his fifth win by correctly identifying the outro to Horn from 6/20/97. Have a safe and happy holiday this week, and we'll be back next week with our 200th MJM! It'll be an MJM extravaganza, with extra difficulty and extra prizes. Stay tuned...

Welcome to the 198th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. The winner will 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 if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. Good luck!

Quick note: One of my first orders of business as MJM host was to add MJM achievement badges for all past winners. Due to the MJM being started on the old Tumblr page (pre standard .net usernames), username changes since winning, and spelling mistakes, I may not have correctly added all past winners' badges. If you've won but don't see the badge in your achievements, please PM me with the MJM you won (see results below).

Update: No hint needed this week.

Answer: Congrats to our sixth seven-time MJM winner, @mcgrupp81, who correctly identified this week's MJM as Mike's Song from 4/24/92 at the Roseland Theater in Portland, OR. With his seventh win, he joins @RabeldyNugs, @pauly, @ghostboogie, @bl002e, and @PersnicketyJim as MJM emeriti, and is henceforth prohibited from participating in the MJM as an active competitor. With 100+ codes to give away and six Hall-of-Famers on the shelf (and yours truly stuck at six wins on this side of the fence), the competition for free Phish downloads is suddenly wide open. Maybe the blog might stand a chance now... See you next week!

I ran some questions by Wally Holland, the author of “A Live One,” published by Bloomsbury as part of its 33⅓ book series. “A Live One” is a book about A Live One (“ALO”), Phish’s first official live album, as well as Phish’s music and fans. What you may not know about ALO is that online Phish fans had some input into what the band ultimately decided to release on the album. On February 5, 1995, Shelly Culbertson posted this invitation to Rec.Music.Phish:

“...I just had a long phone conversation with Trey. ... he'd like to ask the net to do him a favor...

So, the favor is this: if you have the time to do it, please consider constructing the Phish double live CD that you would like to hear. Please bear in mind that this CD should be interesting to people who have never heard Phish before, as well as those who have been listening to them for years. Please remember to consider that versions of songs from lesser-known shows may be as good as, or better than, versions of the same songs from well-known shows such as Halloween and NYE.

The format is two 70-minute CDs ("CD1" and "CD2"). Consider the transitions between songs, and the pace and dramatic flow of the order in which the songs occur on each CD. ... We're not saying that the net's compilation will become the live CD, by any means; but the band will listen to it with open ears, and if they like it, they will seriously consider the suggestions it makes. –Shelly”

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I have been reading Wally’s musings on Phish and music and other topics since the 1990s, and to this day I’m still in disbelief that the band released the Bangor Tweezer on ALO. I am not a disinterested spectator. –charlie)

CD: What in particular about Phish inspired --and continued to motivate-- you in writing this book?

WH: Love, right?

I've been obsessed with different music before: Herbie Hancock, Ornette and his descendants, tango music (and dance), electric Miles, film scores, Kid A, Andrew Bird, Achtung Baby, They Might Be Giants. I've gone through periods where I couldn't live without particular musicians -- John Coltrane especially, and a period where I listened to almost nothing but the Dead.

But I've only ever loved a small number of musicians. What I feel for Phish, beyond what I feel about their music, I can only call love.

That's half of it. But then because the center of our shared fandom, the music itself, is so particular -- the improvisatory method so finicky, the compositional voice so admirably catholic, the humour (still) so absurd, the band/audience connection so deep, the worldview so specific yet so open and welcoming -- I still find writing about Phish a compelling challenge. There's this specific thing they do that no one else has ever done in quite the same way, and even now they're exploring new areas of that art! That's so rare. I keep wanting to write something that's equal to the power of their best music.

Oh! Also the thought of making MOUNTAINS OF MONEY.

Did you learn anything new about Phish's music, or even your own musical perspectives, in writing “A Live One”?

WH: They were even better in the mid-90s than I remembered -- and I had some pretty great memories.

The project was a huge learning experience -- that's one reason I took it on. As personal as it necessarily is, there's a lot less of ME and MY story in there than there might have been.

I learned a bunch about the roots of the band, their inspirations. Only recently have I begun to appreciate how Weird (and disreputable!) some of Phish's early influences were. I'd barely heard any Beefheart before starting my research listening for the book, for instance, and didn't realize how much his painstakingly detailed private visionary weirdness anticipated Trey's and Phish's, though Trey was savvy and sociable enough to build a democratic band, which cuts against his privatizing impulses.

I learned a lot about punk and postpunk, in passing. I don't enjoy punk rock, but what I think of as the postpunk 'fusion' moment generated a ton of really interesting music. Trey's beloved Talking Heads, for one thing...

I realized that there's a (short) book to be written about the mid-80s Burlington music/arts scene and its relationship to other countercultures; I'm definitely not the person to write it, of course.

The biggest realization might be this: the music is way bigger, truer, more beautiful, than anything I have to say about it. You can see how that'd be a blow to a writer's ego, especially one with messianic pretensions. But maybe it's the start of a new, deeper understanding. I hope so.

Would you have written any sections of the book differently now that you've had time to reflect on the process after publishing?

WH: Most of it (sigh) -- but I can't trust my assessment of the book at this moment. I've been reading a lot of Greil Marcus lately, finally, and his approach to rock writing, in which every aesthetic gesture (however small) is understood as a weighty exchange in an ongoing Great American Mythic Conversation, is dangerously contagious, though wearying in large doses. It makes me want to go back to chapter 2, the long forerunners/contexts chapter that sets the stage for everything else in the book, and try to weave it together into something more continuous. Closer to the version in my head.

I'd definitely spend more time fine-tuning the chapter about 'whiteness.' (There is indeed a chapter about 'whiteness.' It's that kind of book. Why bite off only as much as you can chew, after all?) At the moment it veers a little too quickly to a defense of Phish's 'syncretism,' as opposed to 'appropriation,' and I'd wanna take more time before doing so -- think more about the roots of Phish's cultural politics. Well: I blinked.

Who are your favorite authors?

WH: John Crowley, Russell Hoban: fantasists at home with the heightened abstractions of myth-history and the most painfully intimate domestic portraiture -- and Crowley (who wrote Little, Big, an all-time great portrait of lifelong married love) works on a scale approaching that of...

...Thomas Pynchon: the best we've got, isn't he? He commands more registers, and engages with his material at more scales, than any other writer I know. Byron the Bulb? Jessica and Roger at the church? Oedipa putting on all those clothes in the hotel room? 'They fly toward grace'?! He can do everything, and is willing to try.

Douglas Hofstadter, Kenneth Hite: idiosyncratic practitioners of a kind of speculative nonfiction who demonstrate (in maximally different registers and domains) how to turn private obsessions into tools for playful creative thinking. Hofstadter is a CS/cogsci guy; Hite writes roleplaying games.

James Merrill, E.E. Cummings, Pablo Neruda: Merrill's Sandover is a 600-page visionary poem about talking to W.H. Auden and a host of angels through a ouija board. Harrowing, melancholy, regally ironic -- and incidentally a moving portrait of James and David's long marriage (in all but name). Cummings wrote maybe the funniest erotica I know -- and he was more concise than Christgau, for Christ's sake. Neruda's introduction to his 100 Sonnets is one of those perfect things; the rest of the book has seemingly limitless freedom-within-formalism that I hear in Piazzolla.

Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, P.G. Wodehouse: two angry sages and an elf.

Christopher Hitchens: My favourite pugilist. His dialectical arguments on behalf of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq -- from first principles which his colleagues at (e.g.) The Nation theoretically shared -- are still unsettling, even now. A signed copy of his book Letters to a Young Contrarian, which a fan of my old blog(!!) once sent me unprompted, is one of my prize possessions. And it's a beautiful, stirring book about thinking freely and enjoying life.

David Milch: One of my heroes. He has Hitchens's encyclopedic recall, Pynchon's ear for voices, Joss Whedon's command of dialogic rhythm, and Rumi's joyful spirit -- not to mention an improvisatory spirit worthy of, lemmeseehere, Trey Anastasio himself. Deadwood's dialogue is the best ever written for TV, which wouldn't matter if its characters weren't fully realized human beings. Sidebar: his Idea of the Writer lectures are available online, and -- forgive my evangelical zeal -- they can change your life.

All men, I know, on this list at least: one of my shortcomings.

Are you (considering) writing more books about Phish?

WH: Two's enough, I think! Even my 5-year-old son makes fun of 'daddy's Phish books.' Though Phish'll make a cameo in what I think/hope is my next project, which builds on chapter 2 of the 33-1/3 book. It's not primarily about music.

If you could ask a band member any question, who and what?

WH: I'd want to talk to them all about their practice regimen, how that's changed over the years; and about their understanding of changes in the band's music in the late 90s and early 21C. And I have a lot of questions for Page about how he understands his role in the band, since he's the one whose expertise is least obvious.

Will you be at any of the MSG shows?

WH: Doubtful. A nice thought, anyhow.

Thank you for your time, Wally! For more information about the 33⅓ book series, please visit Wikipedia. And to order Wally’s A Live One, please visit Amazon.

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Welcome to the 197th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday. I'd like to thank @bl002e for all his hard work the past few years, attempting to stump us with some great jams across Phish's history. But he's moved on to bigger and better things now and has handed me the reins, so I'll be your new MJM host. I hope my work on the Jam Charts will help me stump you all -- I'm excited to start, and I won't let you guys down. That's right folks, MJM 3.0 is about to begin!

The winner will 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. Though I don't envision doing this anytime soon, given we're approaching MJM #200, I am reserving the right to select different portions of jams that have previously appeared in the MJM. 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!

Tuesday update: No hint needed this week...

Answer: Congratulations and welcome to first-time winner and first-time poster, @trich12345, who came out of the woodwork and correctly guessed 9/17/99 "Viola Lee Blues" from Shoreline. Maybe he too figured that for my first MJM, I should choose a jam from my first show. Next week's MJM won't be so straightforward.

Clarification / Reminder: In the past, we have always revealed the MJM answer on Wednesday even if answered correctly on Monday or Tuesday, as some folks like to play even if they aren't the first to figure it out. If I can get spoiler tags working for the MJM, and if my schedule permits, I will post the correct answer behind a spoiler tag once it's been guessed correctly no matter when that happens. But if not, for future reference, when I say "No hint needed this week" that means that one of the comments contains the correct answer (I'll try to avoid hypercryptic metahints), and I'll post the answer Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. See you next week!

Phish.net is giving away two pairs of tickets to the Mike Gordon show at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on Friday, January 29, 2016, courtesy of the promoter, Goldenvoice. To make this giveaway a bit more fun than a lottery, we're going to have two contests for a pair of tickets each, one this week and one closer to the show in January.

Our experience with Mystery Jam Mondays is that the house usually loses, because some of you are so darned knowledgeable and quick with the right answer. So we've decided to make these contests a bit more difficult by asking about Mike's artistic endeavors other than his (or Phish's) music.

So, the winner of Contest #1 will the first person who correctly answers all four questions below (in the comments to this blog post, like the MJM contests) about Mike's literary work, from his story "Infantry" (Mike's Corner):

1. How many angry babies took the jet elevator to the 90th floor of the Hennison Building?

2. What did one stunned baby say when he saw Arthur Doubletrouble Hennison lying facedown on his desk, dead?

3. Did Alfred Buggyboo do it?

4. Who is Buggyboo?

Good luck!

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