[Take the Bait is spirited deliberation centered around the hyperbole of Phish’s music and fandom, passionately exuded via the written words of phish.net contributors @FunkyCFunkyDo and @n00b100. Opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of phish.net, The Mockingbird Foundation, or any fan… but we're pretty sure we’re right. Probably.]

Funky: Well, n00b, Gordo tour is done. March Madness has left most of us in ruin. And the phish.net forum is cannibalizing itself, wondering just when those West Coast dates are going to be announced ::refreshes forum… clenches fists:: Apparently not today, but some dude thinks tomorrow. I’m rolling with that guy. With Phish, like you, I, that guy, and Smooth Jimmy Apollo all know, when you're right 52% of the time, you're wrong 48% of the time!

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[Welcome To Weekly Catch With Osiris! A weekly series brought to you from the team at Osiris. Each Wednesday we're going to bring you a historic Phish show from that week with some commentary. Our goal is to go beyond official releases and well-known shows to bring you some of the overlooked gems throughout Phish history. If you like what you find, we'd encourage you to check out the assortment of podcasts at the Osiris! This week's catch comes from Brian Brinkman of Beyond The Pond.]

Listen: Hunt's, Burlington, VT - 04/01/1986

Between March 1985 and November 1987, Phish played nearly 20 shows at Hunt's in Burlington. We all know of Nectar's and the famed residencies the band played there, as well as the gravy fries. For whatever reason, Hunt's tends to fall below the radar for most fans when discussing Phish's formative years. And yet, it was in this venue - which has seen performances by BB King, Roy Orbison, Gregg Allman, Pat Methany and Taj Mahal - where the band debuted classics such as "Harry Hood," "You Enjoy Myself," "Icculus," "AC/DC Bag," and "I Didn't Know."

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Welcome to the 369th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the first of April! The winner will receive an MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the song and date of the mystery clip. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Answer: April Fools from @ucpete and myself! We spent a bit of time figuring out the best way to wield this rarity of a coincidental MJM and April Fool's Day. @Mshow96 aka the Captain of all things Kosmic made utter mincemeat of our crafty little trick in mere hours, correctly identifying the crowd applause from the pause from 6/18/94's Divided Sky. He receives his second download code off a one-clipper; shall his streak continue, or will he learn to best the multibeastclip MJM?

[Welcome To Weekly Catch With Osiris! A weekly series brought to you from the team at Osiris. Each Wednesday we're going to bring you a historic Phish show from that week with some commentary. Our goal is to go beyond official releases and well-known shows to bring you some of the overlooked gems throughout Phish history. If you like what you find, we'd encourage you to check out the assortment of podcasts at the Osiris! This week's catch comes from Michael Shield of Across The Margin.]

Listen: Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, CA, 03/26/1993

Welcome to another installment of the Weekly Catch with Osiris where, yet again, a Phish show from the Spring of 1993 is highlighted. Truth be told we — and any Phish fan who loves the playful, balls-to-the-wall (still a saying?) nature of Phish in ‘93 — could talk about the grandeur and antics of the band during this period of time for days on end. But, personally, what I love specifically and most intensely about this era are the “Split Open and Melt” versions which were played. Each version is unique in its own right, driven, often sinister, and pointed and concise (relative to Phish of course!), in a way that toys with momentum and the beat which is at the heart of a song.

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A great article in Streaming Media a few days ago lays out how Phish delivered the four shows of the 2018 Halloween run in 4K to phans at home - the first time any live concert had streamed in 4K!

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Welcome to the 368th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the fourth and hardest of March. The winner will receive an MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the songs and dates of the three mystery clips. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Hint: Phish has covered a certain color-themed band quite a bit, though I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s any colour you like...

Answer: And then there were... 22? The Blog's favorite math professor, @ChalkDustTeacher, has done it again and catapulted himself downtown straight into the MJM Hall of Fame with his seventh win. This week, he needed the hint (thanks to @Dog_Faced_Boy for handling that for us!) but saw right through it to nail down the three jams played at shows feature Pink Floyd covers: 6/17/11 "Rock and Roll," 5/1/93 "Weekapaug Groove" (listen to the whole thing - it's psych ward level insanity), and the 9/12/00 "Down with Disease." This week's MJM should serve as a reminder that outside of the 11/2/98 Dark Side of the Moon cover, Phish has paid homage to their forefathers more than a few dozen times (see: many of the "HYHU" > "Bike" > "HYHU" Fishman features, the aforementioned tournament final featuring the "Mike's" -> "Breathe" from 10/25/95, or any of the "Great Gig in the Sky" renditions from '93-'94).

@ChalkDustTeacher burst onto the scene during the MMJM tournament a couple years back – he was a virtual nobody, and hadn't yet won a single MJM. We were dubious of the performance by a rookie, wondering what sort of fingerprinting algorithms he may have written to buoy his just-short performance. But he quickly put those thoughts to rest by winning his first and second MJMs back-to-back a few weeks later, finishing with three wins in the four months following his Wookiee of the Year performance. But then he disappeared for all of 2018, and we thought he was the latest to burn out and not fade away. Some heard he was working on Hilbert's Problems, others said he may have been searching for stable solutions to the Navier-Stokes equation. It's unclear if there's a rational answer to exactly what he was up to, but what we know for sure is that 2019 brought him out of the Great White Woodwork to win four of the next ten (!) MJMs to finally put the theories to bed. Congrats @ChalkDustTeacher! One question as you hop aboard the cruise ship towards the vault: do you know what MJM Emeriti smell like? Depends...

It's not every day that Trey sits in with a band in a small club. But last night, Trey sat in for more than half of Mike Gordon's show at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA. It was the first time in years--since 4/4/14--that Mike got to play with both Scott Murawski and Trey, the two guitarists he's gigged with the most over the last 30 years. What was obviously a treat for Mike was also a treat for everyone present last night.

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[Welcome To Weekly Catch With Osiris, a weekly piece brought to you from the team at Osiris. Each Wednesday we're going to bring you a Phish show from that week with some commentary. Our goal is to go beyond official releases and well-known shows to bring you some of the overlooked gems throughout Phish history. If you like what you find, we'd encourage you to check out the assortment of podcasts at the Osiris! This week's catch comes from RJ Bee of Helping Friendly Podcast.]]

I'm going to keep it short and sweet this time. Sometimes, we look at "the show," in this case, 3.20.92 from Binghamton. But sometimes, it's fun to look at the show before "the show," or the show after "the show." As fans, we sometimes don't do this, because we've been trained over time to expect the before/after "the show" to be lacking, or at least not as good. And with 1,660 Phish shows (according to ZZYZX's amazing IHOZ), you can't listen to everything. Or can you? Anyway, let's check out "the show after the show," 3.21.92 from Philadelphia. Also, this second set was released on video by a fan in 2017, as highlighted by JamBase.

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Welcome to the 367th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the third of March. This week's puzzle comes to you courtesy of MJM Hall of Famer @jimsleftear – special shout out to the Emeritus crew for the endless stream of jam recommendations! The winner will receive an MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the songs and dates of the two mystery clips. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Hint:

Answer: Coming in hot on the hint, @HarborSeal picks up his sixth win! He noticed the hint as a photo from the film Garden State - the home of fellow MJM host @wforwumbo - and successfully picked out the 7/25/93 Tweezer and 6/23/95 Runaway Jim. And now the clock is on for when (and not if!) @HarborSeal picks up a seventh win and joins the promise land of the emeriti! Will it happen next week? Stay tuned to find out!

Oregon State University will host the first Phish Studies academic conference in Corvallis, Oregon on May 17-19, 2019. The conference will showcase research about Phish, its fans, and culture. A wide variety of disciplinary approaches will be represented, featuring scholars from across the country.

Registration is open and a tentative list of presentations is available now. Stay tuned for announcements about schedule details and special guests.

There are a number of ways that you can support the conference and growing field of Phish Studies:

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[Welcome To Weekly Catch With Osiris! A weekly series brought to you from the team at Osiris. Each Wednesday we're going to bring you a historic Phish show from that week with some commentary. Our goal is to go beyond official releases and well-known shows to bring you some of the overlooked gems throughout Phish history. If you like what you find, we'd encourage you to check out the assortment of podcasts at the Osiris! This week's catch comes from Brian Brinkman of Beyond The Pond.]

Listen: Paul Wright Gym, Gunnison, CO, 03/14/1993

I'm not crazy to say Spring 1993 might be the most fun tour Phish has ever embarked on, am I? No, not the best - that would be Fall 1995 - nor the most transcendent - Fall 1997 - nor even their most important - that would be Spring/Summer 1994.

But think about Spring 1993: The band crosses the country once in an epic two-month trek before looping back around over five weeks which sees them playing some of the best shows they'd ever played to that point, on their home turf no less. They still played in theatres and small gyms, performing in front of die-hard, in-the-know fans, all of whom believed in everything Phish. And they approached each show with a growing sense of understanding of what they could become, while still retaining the air of collegiate pranksterdom that had defined them to that point. They were still writing classic Phish songs, and hadn't yet made that leap to national stardom. It was a halcyon time to be in Phish, and a show like March 14, 1993, from Gunnison, CO, is a perfect exmple of this tour's brilliance and joy.

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Welcome to the 366th edition of Phish.Net's Mystery Jam Monday, the second of March! This week's puzzle comes to you courtesy of fellow emeritus @phreephish, chopped up and mastered as usual from my personal collection of tapes. The winner will receive an MP3 download code courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. To win, be the first person to identify the songs and dates of the two mystery clips. Each person gets one guess to start – if no one answers correctly in the first 24 hours, I'll post a hint. After the hint, everyone gets one more guess before Wednesday at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Good luck!

Answer: Congrats to first-time MJM winner @Chunk0Funk, who created an account to swoop in on this week's MJM, thus earning a free show download from LivePhish. Despite the implications of his handle, he flexed his '99 love this week in bagging and tagging the 12/8/99 "Piper" and the 12/15/99 "Bathtub Gin." Come back next week for MJM367 when we roll another double clipper out there for the masses.

[Take the Bait is spirited deliberation centered around the hyperbole of Phish’s music and fandom, passionately exuded via the written words of phish.net contributors @FunkyCFunkyDo and @n00b100. Opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of phish.net, The Mockingbird Foundation, or any fan… but we're pretty sure we’re right. Probably.]

Funky: Well, n00b, we seemed to have escaped certain death after our last episode about Lemonwheel. But I'm feeling lucky - lest we tempt fate further, and share our thoughts on the other festival that happened in 1999. No, not Big Cypress, uhm, what was the other one? Oh... Camp Oswego. Uh-oh. I heard that death doesn't hurt very long, so...

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This week, team HF Pod is celebrating its 150th episode in style, looking back on the run that started it all for this era of Phish, Hampton 2009. We talk about the shows and play some highlights from the run as well. Leave us a comment about where you were and your memories from that run.

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[Welcome To Weekly Catch With Osiris! A weekly series brought to you from the team at Osiris. Each Wednesday we're going to bring you a historic Phish show from that week with some commentary. Our goal is to go beyond official releases and well-known shows to bring you some of the overlooked gems throughout Phish history. If you like what you find, we'd encourage you to check out the assortment of podcasts at the Osiris! This week's catch comes from Brian Brinkman of Beyond The Pond.]

Listen: Hunt's, Burlington, VT, 03/04/1985

Most bands never make it. Most peak in a college bar & flutter out shortly thereafter. Most play covers, a few half-hearted originals, loosely connect musically, share a few inside jokes with their audience, and then fade into nothingness as though they never existed. Most bands mean nothing. Most are just an overly-ambitious idea that will never be fully developed. Most are just a hobby.

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