Phish.net and the Mockingbird Foundation present:

The first annual Mockingbird Mystery Jam Madness Tournament!
The second round started today (Thursday, March 23rd), just before Noon PT / 3 PM ET.

RULES:
1) Each participant gets one guess per day, with the next day beginning at midnight ET (certain rounds may provide hints if needed, but regardless of hints posted, each participant gets one guess per calendar day). All answers must be submitted (along with your .net @username) to mockingbird.mystery.jams@gmail.com – do not post guesses or hints, joking or serious, in the comments section of the Blog – guesses posted to the Blog will not be accepted and will be deleted (irrespective of correctness), the affected round may be voided and restarted, and the offending user(s) may have their accounts suspended and be banned from future (M)MJM competitions. No sharing or trading of answers is permitted. This is for fun and for charity, but we want the tournament to be eminently fair.

2) The first 8 participants to answer correctly advance to the next round – if 8 or fewer participants answer correctly, all will advance. The round ends when the number of participants needed for the next round have advanced – if a round drags on due to poor participation or lack of correct answers despite hints, I will give participants a 24-hour deadline to complete the round. Each successive round will cut down the number of active participants (typically by half), and the puzzles will get progressively more difficult as the tournament continues. After 5 rounds, there will be only one participant remaining: our first annual MMJM Tournament Champion.

3) Our ten Mystery Jam Monday Emeritus (7+ time) winners are permitted to participate, and three are still alive, so don't dawdle!

PRIZE:
The champion will win:
1) Two LivePhish codes, each good for the download of any show from LivePhish.com (courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com and nugs.net);
2) A $100 donation to the Mockingbird Foundation in their name;
3) The staff of Phish.net will do a blog piece about / interview of the winner on their love of Phish and their MJM prowess.

NOTE:
Participants are encouraged (but not required) to make a donation to the Mockingbird Foundation – in the first round, we received one donation (thank you!) to my knowledge. Every donation counts – we greatly appreciate anything you can spare for children's music programs – $10 is less than the amount of money you'd save by drinking two extra beers in lot pre-show instead of buying them at the beer garden inside. Seeing folks donate to help fund grants for underserved children's music programs is what fuels the Phish.net staff and Mockingbird Foundation Board of Directors; and knowing that running contests and giveaways for this wonderful community can actually lead directly to more donations is exactly what gives us that extra bit of energy needed to put events like this on, free of charge, even when real life occupies all our time. So if you haven't donated to the MBF yet in 2017, please consider it; and if you do, we'll put a MBF badge in your achievements alongside that badge you got for winning the MJM.

ROUND 2 CLIPS:
The first 8 people to email the correctly identified songs and dates of these ten clips will advance to the second round. The theme of this round is "Moments Like These" – these clips all come from fleeting moments in Phish shows that stick out in my mind as unique. I suspect many of you will recognize many of them on first listen, but there is at least one that nobody can be reasonably expected to know off the bat, so ideally we won't have any insta-solves. The first four seeds (#1-#4) received the clip around Noon PT / 3 PM ET; the next four seeds (#5-#8) received the clip around 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET, etc. until all the seeded participants got the link to the clip. When this post goes live, the wildcard players will get access too. Good luck everyone, and those not in Round 2, please don't spoil any answers or I'll have to close the comments!

ROUND 2 SEEDING:

ROUND 2 UPDATE:
For those confused by the track boundaries on this wacky megaclip, here are the clip start and end times (and yes, the one second dropout in clip #1 was on purpose):

ROUND 2 HINT:
Six of the clips were played in the US.
Five of the clips were played in '97 - '00.
Four of the clips were played at shows I attended.
Three of the clips were played in March.
Two of the clips were played at venues with the same nickname* – but are in two different cities in the same state.
One of the clips isn't in Phish.in', because it happened before the band started playing the set.

*By "nickname," I'm referring not to a venue's official name as listed on phish.net, but the name by which most every fan refers to it. Vegas '14 was played at "MGM," New Year's eve is played at "MSG," the reunion shows were at "Hampton," too bad the band isn't playing "Shoreline" or "Bill Graham" this year, etc. Two of these clips have nearly the exact same venue name, but one of them has some extra words in its official venue name.

FINAL UPDATE:

As of 4:00 PM ET on March 26th, I have received SEVEN correct submissions – and an eighth user has submitted a correct scoresheet that I can't accept until midnight ET because he already guessed once for Sunday. Many users are ridiculously close – be sure to cross-check your answers with the hint (and yes, my shows seen are up-to-date). If a user who hasn't yet guessed today submits a correct scoresheet before midnight ET, that user will fill the last slot. If any users who have guessed today submit a correct scoresheet before midnight ET, we'll have a tie for the last slot, and more than eight will advance. Either way, Round 2 ends today!

ANSWER:

Congrats to the users below for being the first and only eight to correctly identify all ten clips:

THE CLIPS:

7/6/98 Maze, 3/19/93 Love You, 8/6/10 Cities, 7/9/97 YEM, 12/7/97 Tube, 3/6/09 YEM, 6/14/00 Fee, 2/14/03 AC/DC Bag, 4/17/04 Meatstick, 3/1/97 Cities

If you liked this blog post, one way you could "like" it is to make a donation to The Mockingbird Foundation, the sponsor of Phish.net. Support music education for children, and you just might change the world.