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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​For nearly two decades, we and everyone else has listed the 7/30/93 show as "The Veranda at Starwood." That's what Phish called it in their newsletter the previous spring (see at left). But the space didn't even exist yet, as a performance space – and that's not how Starwood billed it. A recently unearthed flyer reveals the space's correct name – or, at least, how the venue was billed that week and that night.

Starwood Amphitheatre was a small southern outdoor amphitheatre owned successively by SFX, Clear Channel, and Live Nation, but closed in 2006 and razed in 2007. Akin to the Nissan Pavillion in Northern Virginia, it had a capacity of 17,137 -- far too big for a 1993 Phish show. It still isn't clear why or how this was the spot to play on the way from Knoxville to Atlanta. But staff roped off the concessions area – a large, flat, concrete plaza directly ahead of the entrance gates – and erected a stage along the edge.

Even with the reduction in space, the space was too big, roped off to accomodate 3,500 though fewer than 1,800 tickets were sold. The area was so restricted that attending fans never even saw the venue proper. The entrance walkway seemed to be straight ahead, through the plaza - but the stage was to the right, with a view of the skyline behind the band. That's where the flock assembled, being eyed suspiciously by the local constables, as they themselves were eyeing the skyline and discussing the Stowe "plug the PA up my ass" comment of 8 days prior. But on this night, nature and the fuzz both backed off, and the band and fans locked in.

We didn't even need, or want, their mammoth "venue proper." We knew it would be special, from flyers taped (yes, actually taped) to windshields in Knoxville the night before (see to right), which promised “a stage built behind the hill in the Plaza area. By not using the usual pavilion area, the Phish family will have a close, intimate experience.” They billed it "the debut plaza party," and we're not aware of any other band performing in that space. It was ours that night, and it's never belonged to anyone else. When Phish announced it, it's name apparently hadn't yet settled. But by the time they took the stage, twenty years ago last week, it was – for one night only – the Plaza at Starwood.

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Check back on August 12 for MJM Part 155!

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For our final recap before Dick's, we decided to invite forum regular and significant contributor of reviews, @n00b100, who has already listened to countless hours of Phish, but saw his first live performance just last night in Los Angeles, to be a guest recapper.

It wasn't the drive up from San Diego where it truly hit me that I was about to see my first Phish show after becoming a true fan. Nor was it when I met up with some very friendly .netters and actually got to chat about the band in person, hearing cool stories about first shows and seeing the Giant Country Horns in person and witnessing the Prague Ghost. Nor was it on the walk to the Hollywood Bowl (also my first time for that hallowed venue), seeing people of all ages wearing everything from sundresses right out of Monterey Pop to "Reba" t-shirts using the Reese's logo to a fellow in a full three-piece suit. It was only when I sat in my space on the long wooden bench that constituted my row in Section L2, that I realized it. Almost fifty years ago a young girl sat in my very space and screamed nonsense at The Beatles, and in 20 minutes (give or take) I'd be screaming nonsense at Phish. That is when it really and truly hit me - I was at my first show. All the tapes, the spreadsheet scouring, the LivePhish CDs - that was just spring training. I was in the big leagues now.

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Ahh, West Coast Couch Tour! This fits my current schedule pretty well, unlike most of my adopted East Coast brethren who work normal people hours. There is also a nostalgia factor for me, since BGCA 3 last year was my first recapping experience for Phish.net. I enjoy writing these, but I thought I was done until the fall, so I was excited to get one more crack at it before the break. Now, let’s go to the show!

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OK, Phish fans.... we’re almost at the finish line for this leg of summer tour 2013! It has been a wild ride, and we still have the home stretch over the next two nights. Let’s cut to the action from Saturday at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. This recapper ran into a late-night perfect storm of adult socializing that resulted in an inspection of the sunrise, so today we’re going to necessarily be a bit brief.

“Grind” starts off the gig, giving us our first taste of a cappella for the tour. The first “Weigh” since 6/28/12 Deer Creek (45 shows) also offers enough “stop-start” to allow the crowd to exercise some of the hopefully subsiding “woo” energy. In a silly oddball song like “Weigh” this crowd effort doesn’t seem intrusive – as opposed, say, to during the previous evening’s “Reba” – though hopefully we’re all getting this out of our system. The new-to-2013 start rolls on with the always spirited “Alumni Blues” > “Letter to Jimmy Page” > “Alumni Blues,” only the sixth such performance since 1994.

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From the editors: For this installment of our Summer Tour Recaps, the editors of Phish.net wanted to extend an invitation to Peter Skewes-Cox (aka @ucpete) to offer his perspective on Friday night’s return to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Peter is a San Francisco native and longtime West Coast fan who in the last few years has become a more avid contributor to phish.net by reviewing shows and annotating as many teases as he can.

The 20th show of Summer Tour 2013 (and this reviewer’s 25th show since 1999) brought Phish to the place where being a dirty hippie was invented. A place I’m proud to call “home”. The tour has started off quite well, and has only continued to gather more steam (and rain) as the band knocks out its annual West Coast Swing. The anticipation in the crowd of 7,000 was palpable, and it seems in every direction one could hear a conversation involving “Tweezer”, “Tahoe”, and “37 minutes”. Not only was the “Tahoeezer” fresh in everyone’s minds, but the last time the band was at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, this happened. Would the band drop a 38 minute Ghost tonight, replete with “WOOO”? Or would they “revert” back to the fluid, well-structured, cohesive sets of July? Would the first of three be the “song-driven” show? Would there be a much-wanted Dead sit-in or cover for three San Francisco shows falling in the week between Jerry’s birthday and the anniversary of his death (somehow I got both in my first two shows and haven’t had either since)? Let’s find out…

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The first leg of our journey to see Phish in Lake Tahoe was grueling. After two amazing shows at the Gorge Amphitheater had left my wife and I in a state of complete disarray, we loaded up the truck and began the long descent from the Columbia Plateau to the Klamath Lake Basin. The drive seemed interminably long, owing mostly to the fatigue of three solid days of raging hard against the dying of the keg, but also due to some severe wildfire smoke inhalation. At times the road ahead was lost in a hazy mirage. My whole face seemed chapped from the dry heat of the high desert. After nine hours of hard labor, we pulled up to the Running Y Ranch and settled into our lodging for the night. We were so tired, we couldn’t even be bothered to pull the lid off the hot tub we had at our disposal. The ascent from Klamath Falls to the liquid sapphire in the center of the Sierra Nevada uplift was, in stark contrast, the driving equivalent of a cool mountain breeze blowing up the leg of my cargo shorts. Incredible what a good sleep can do for your performance. If I had any sense I would pay attention to that lesson and take a nap before I wrote this recap. Since I took two, and drove home to Portland, I apologize that you may not read this before the Bill Graham shows begin. Hell, I was only signed up for writing the recap for night two in Tahoe...but since my esteemed colleague Phillip Zerbo was busy training for his epic second place finish at the Phamily Poker Classic and couldn’t stop shuffling his deck long enough to put fingers to keyboard, I had to combine both shows into one ball of earwax. So let’s get to burning it.

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Back in the early age of the internet, and before widespread use of cell phones, fans would usually have to wait until the next morning to find out what happened at a concert. I have three vivid memories from undergrad when, while I was sitting at a computer, I felt myself filling with excitement and joy in reading what had happened the night before. One was March 20, 1995, when I read on rec.music.dead that the Grateful Dead *finally* played Unbroken Chain to close the previous night's first set in Philadelphia (stories were coming back that a few chosen fans held up their cell phones for friends; others rushed to use pay phones at setbreak -- it was a big deal). The next was November 1 of that same year when I walked from Studio near the Pantheon to one of the only computer labs in all of Rome, just north of the Vatican, to find out that Phish played Quadrophenia for Halloween. The third was in the Fall of 1996, reading about Phish's famous "M" set from St. Louis, complete with Mean Mr. John Popper (just a week after seeing my fourth and fifth shows).

Fast-forward seventeen years to yesterday morning, when I woke up to hundreds of messages on my phone in the form of Tweets and GroupMe posts describing what had gone down just a few hours earlier in Tahoe. If I had stayed up, I could have even listened along to the Tweezer by means of a fan's stream from the show. Instead, I quickly downloaded the show and was able to listen to the eighth-longest song Phish ever played twice before I even got into work. And by early morning, I was up to my fourth listen (compared to seventeen years earlier, when I was resigned that I would have to wait weeks -- or months -- before I could even hear a note; I remember anxiously awaiting for a tape Vine or Tree for that Dead show . . . ).

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