From Phish.com:

In support of Record Store Day, Phish will release Two Soundchecks, a Limited Edition 7-inch vinyl record that will be available exclusively at participating independently owned record stores across the country. 'Two Soundchecks' marks the band's first ever live vinyl release and their first release in conjunction with Record Store Day.

This 7-inch is limited to 2,000 hand-numbered copies, and once they are gone they are gone. The A-Side is an instrumental jam culled from the soundcheck of Phish's third show of a sold out three-night stand at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA. The B-Side is an especially exotic soundcheck from Hartford, CT in 2009, featuring Trey on Bass, and Fish on drums. This Limited Edition 7-inch was created exclusively for Record Store Day.

Two Soundchecks will be available in stores only beginning April 16th, 2011. For a complete list of participating record stores, please click here.

Let me explain the sign situation from where we stand onstage. We see them the first time you hold them up. Yes, we saw the Manteca sign at the Garden. Page and I were cracking up about it backstage. The problem is, if you keep holding them up all night, It blocks the view of the people behind you, so it seems kind of insensitive to everyone else. We saw it the first time, so you don’t have to keep holding it up…you can put it down. A lot of people just hold them up between songs, which is very thoughtful.

The other thing is that sometimes we need to run through some of these songs before we can play them, because there are SO many songs now that even the easy ones sometimes have a little quirk that one band member might forget. It’s usually something small. Like Fish will say that he can’t remember how My Mind Has a Mind of Its Own ends because it’s so similar to other bluegrass tunes. Stuff like that. So often we’ll see a sign, and think “we’ll check that one out tomorrow”.

The last thing is, it’s not very in the moment to be obsessing about the next song while you are playing or listening to the song you are actually playing or listening to, is it? In that sense, the signs are really annoying sometimes, I have to say."

From Part One of the Hidden Track blog's interview with Trey here.

Mystery Jam Monday Part 37

The Blog is back with another Monday Mystery Jam. Fresh off a rare Blog victory last week, we will be playing for TWO MP3 downloads courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.net. The rules are simple: 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: Looks like there's no need for a hint this week.  And, west-coasters, we hear you.  The Blog tries hard to avoid east coast bias both in MJ selection and otherwise.  We'll try to come up with something.

Wednesday Answer: It was, in fact, the 6/28/00 "Bathtub Gin," making Control_For_Smilers our big winner.  Congrats, C_F_S!  Starting next week, the Blog will schedule posts of the Mystery Jam for later in the day on Monday, to accommodate the west coasters.  You guys may not get many shows, but you at least deserve a fair shot at the Mystery Jam! 

We won't record any covers. ... I don't think that most of the covers we do are in an original enough fashion to merit putting them on an album. .. Its something we just don't put that much energy into. The covers that we learn, we learn because they're great songs and we play around. ... It's kind of more like educational material than it is something that we want to ... put our stamp on.

"Hands on a Hardbody", a new musical Trey and songwriter Amanda Green ("Burn that Bridge", "Summer of 89", "My Problem Right There") collaborated on for the music, will be opening in Manhattan in March for a three-week run. The show is produced by the La Jolla (California) Playhouse company and directed by Neil Pepe.

According to the article on the show biz site Playbill.com, the musical is based on a documentary about contestants trying to win a hardbody truck by being the last person standing with his hands on the truck, like the Survivor immunity challenges.  The producers casting the show are looking for singers who "should have authentic, skilled country/folk voices and genuine acting chops. It is a strong ensemble piece."

'The varied characters include a Texas disc jockey who has a garage band; a manager at a car dealership; a returning champ who spins tall tales; an aging ex-oil rigger; a Louisiana ladies' man; an Iraq war vet; a young, unemployed oddball; a long-haul trucker, a poor man with a loving wife and eight kids; a psychology professor who is an expert on sleep deprivation; a soft-spoken Latino kid who aspires to college; a female marketing director at the local Nissan dealership; a tomboy who can belt to a D; a middle-aged woman of faith; and a former cheerleader."

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The Mimi Fishman Foundation just launched a new charity auction, closing Sunday, February 27. The auction features posters from the 2010 Phish Fall tour as well as their New Years run, all numbered and signed by all members of Phish, as well as two String Cheese Incident 2011 Winter Carnival packages with tickets to all three SCI March 2011 shows as well as a signed poster from the band.

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Mystery Jam Monday Part 36

The Blog is back with another Monday Mystery Jam. This week and every week, we will be playing for an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.net. The rules are simple: 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:

The MJ is from a venue Phish has only played once.

Wednesday Answer:

First off, our apologies for the technical difficulties with the Mystery Jam these last couple weeks.  We'll work on getting these minor hiccups fixed.  So, having said that.......Blog FTW!!!  The MJ was the 8/25/93 "YEM." Definitely a version worth seeking out if you've never heard it. So, since no one got the Mystery Jam this week, we will be paying for two LivePhish.com downloads next week.  Until then, thank you for your continued support of the Mystery Jam series.

Last week, we unveiled J-Card Mode on Phish.net.  The response was overwhelmingly positive, especially given that it was a "throwaway" feature - meant more for entertainment than utility.  It didn't add anything new to the experience, it was solely intended for fun.  We didn't expect to receive the amount of feedback we did, and we certainly didn't anticipate the number of requests for a true "J-Card" view of setlists.  

In retrospect, it only made sense for us to follow through on the concept.  We should have anticipated the demand for the throwback tape inserts.  Alas, a few days later, we're delivering it.  Today I'm releasing "J-Card Setlists."  Yes, the name is similar to J-Card Mode and perhaps even a bit confusing.  The challenge here is that some will want shorter song titles but not the altered setlist view, so we're making them optional.  Starting right now, you'll see a new option on the setlist page called "Show J-Card Setlists."   When you click this link, individual setlists will now display as follows: 

This feature is new and still in unofficial testing.  It does some weird things when you're viewing incomplete sets and only approximates an actual j-card so much.  But we hope you find it as entertaining as we do, if only for the novelty.  

Note: This feature currently is disabled in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and below.  The styling requires features that do not work.  

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Brando and Dusty at cashortrade.org, the phan operated, "face" ticket exchange, are giving away two tickets each to the 2/19 Palace Theatre Albany TAB show and the 3/22/11 Mike show at the Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn in a random drawing from all cashortrade.org members that recommend three new members to join the service.

Further details at the cashortrade.org website here.

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Phish released the 2nd round of summer 2010 shows in remastered format today. These hand-picked shows were remastered for this release by Fred Kevorkian and are available on iTunes and hard copy CD at select music stores. So far there is no published list of music stores that will carry the CDs. The three shows chosen for this release are:

8/6/2010 Greek Theater, Berkeley, CA iTunes Link

8/7/2010 Greek Theater, Berkeley, CA iTunes Link

8/13/2010 Verizon Wireless Music Center (formerly Deer Creek), Noblesville, IN iTunes Link

Has anyone compared the LivePhish.com downloads to these fresh remasters? We would love to hear your opinions in the comments.

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I don’t treasure my Phish shows like I used to.  I have a whole hard drive full of them, and I’ve backed them all up.  I don’t want to lose them, but if I do, what of it?  It doesn’t matter, all those ones and zeros still exist out there in the ether, so I can track them down again if I have to. To get tapes, let alone listenable ones, that took some doing.  You had to network, both in person at shows and afterwards online.  Every overstuffed bubble mailer that arrived at your door represented some sort of minor miracle.

When I was a senior in High School I got sent a pristine First Generation (remember “generations”, no more, thanks to digital) copy of 10/22/96, Madison Square Garden, within a week of it happening. That was a big damn deal!  I must’ve dubbed a hundred copies of that show and made enough trips to the post office to know the clerks by name in order to spread the jams.  It really took some doing.

My tape collection still has more personality than anything I’ve ever downloaded.  Each package would arrive in the mailbox, and there was this moment of excitement.  What could it contain?  Is this the perfect show?!  Some tapes would arrive with almost no information.  Annoying yes, but somewhat like a game to figure out what you were listening to. Some of the best ones would come with full-on artwork that rivaled an official release.  But some of those other tapes really had character! Out of the blue, there’d be god knows what, like stickers, pictures and other ephemera.  It was kind of like a grab bag of Phishness.

- Aaron Hawley, excerpt from "The Relentless Communicator: A Tape Trader’s Lament" (2/1/11) on onlinephishtour.com.

Not very long ago, Phish shows were traded almost exclusively by tape.  While tapers circulated shows in DAT, those of us who weren't  all digital traded in low-generation tapes.  Who amongst us doesn't remember the Maxell XL IIs?  

Tapes typically circulated with a hand-written liner known commonly as a "J-card", since when removed from the case, it was shaped like a J.  These J-cards left only about an inch and a half to write out the contents of each side of a tape.  More often that not, people would strain to write all the titles in the pre-printed lines, leaving what would today look like a 9 point font. Those who hadn't the time for such penmanship would often ignore the line on the J-card altogether and just slather the titles across the paper.  Either way, you would have to be creative in your text-spacing to get longer song titles to fit.  

So it's not unexpected that those who traded tapes began using abbreviations for songs, and it's even less strange that many of those abberviations still exist today.  Perhaps we're not trading tapes anymore, but it's still pretty common to see people jotting down setlists while at the show, even if smart phones pointed to sites like m.phish.net are becoming more common.  Abbreviations are used throughout the Phish world, and even in our own reviews and forum you'll find people refer to songs using a lingo known only to those who immerse themselves in our world.  Could MMGAMOIO mean anything to anyone but a Phish head? 

The Phish.net Setlist archive aims to be the gold standard for Phish setlists, but like any true reference material, it's formal and complete.   Some might argue, then, that it's dry, given the way we actually speak conversationally about the material.  That's why we developed "shorthand setlists J-Card Mode song nicknames"   You can think of shorthand setlists as a "J-card mode" for Phish.net.  Once enabled, it will display song titles in their abbreviated form: YEM for You Enjoy Myself, BEK for Black-Eyed Katy, and many more.  We've enjoyed playing with this feature and think those familiar with Phish, especially those whose past is littered with J-cards, will appreciate the nostalgic fun too.   

You can toggle "shorthand setlists J-Card Mode song nicknames" at the top of the setlists page.   

Update: This feature has been officially renamed "J-Card Mode" at the request of our users.    

Update 2: With the release of "J-Card View", we decided to simplify the system and tag this "song nicknames,"  which is more appropriate given what J-Card View actually does.  We apologize for the contiuned waffling. 

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[Inflation] has been going backwards down the number line for the better part of two years now.”

The Blog returns with your Monday Mystery Jam. This week and every week, we will be playing for an MP3 download courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.net. The rules are simple: 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. 1...2...3...Go!

Tuesday Hint:

If you listen carefully to the beginning of it, you'll probably figure it out.

Wednesday Answer:

Congrats to Jay (Choda) for correctly guessing the 8/2/03 Ya Mar. The Blog will be back on Monday with another Mystery Jam...

The band has not confirmed that they are playing Watkins Glen over the July 4th holiday weekend (June 30 - July 3), but there's been a lot of chatter about a potential festival there for weeks now.  A story on "bandsthatjam.com" claimed that a contract had been signed, and it appeared to be credible -- until another story from stargazette.com reported that the President of the Watkins Glen racetrack has denied that any contract with a promoter had been signed.  He confirmed, however, that they have been "working with a concert promoter."

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