Welcome to the 228th edition of Mystery Jam Monday. This week, we continue with our Hall of Fame Series, when we hand the keys to the MJM command center over to one of the now eight, seven-time MJM winners. For week 2 of this Emeritus Series, we welcome @pauly, the second person forced into mandatory, early retirement after notching his seventh MJM victory.

To Win: Be the first person to identify the song and date of each of the five mystery jam clips, and answer what they share in common. Each person gets one attempt per day, with the second “day” starting after the Blog posts the hint -- each answer should contain five songs / dates, along with the commonality between them. No sharing or trading of answers is allowed. A hint will be posted on Tuesday if necessary, with the answer to follow on Wednesday. The winner will receive an MP3 code good for a free download of any show, courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com / Nugs.Net. Good luck, and thanks again to @pauly for hosting this second week of the MJM Hall of Fame Series.

NOTE: As a thank you and congratulatory gesture from @ucpete to his (new) MJM Emeritus brethren, he's opted to forfeit his winning code from last week and instead will allow the other MJM Hall of Fame winners to scrap for it in a special MJM: Championship Edition. If one of the MJM Emeritus winners takes down the MJM: Championship Edition, he will win the extra code. If all Hall of Famers fail to take home the extra code, but someone else solve's @pauly's MJM, that winner will take home two codes. The MJM Emeritus winners will refrain from answering MJM 228, and the weekly guessing crew will return the favor by not spoiling the MJM: Championship Edition, but both groups should use the comments section to provide their answers.

@RabeldyNugs, @pauly, @ghostboogie, @bl002e, @PersnicketyJim, @mcgrupp81, and @yunkfunk:>>> MJM: Championship Edition <<<

Hint for MJM 228:

Hint for MJM: Championship Edition: .gnihtemos lleps sMJM tsoM

Answer: It took a five-part, super difficult MJM to get there, but for only the 16th time, the Blog (c/o@pauly) has won! The name of the guy in the picture is "Pauly," just like the MJM savant of yesteryear. The clips?

Piper - 9/17/99
After Midnight - 5/31/11
Undermind - 8/15/11
LA Woman - 12/30/03
You Enjoy Myself - 4/29/94

While the Emeritus crew did a great job stumping the regulars this week, they clearly couldn't handle a taste of their own medicine and didn't even muster a single guess or answer for any of the three clips! So let's do it this way: anyone who can solve the MJM: Championship Edition will win the code I put up for adoption last week -- submit your answer in the comments any time. And next week, we'll play for two more codes regardless. The MJM:CE triple clip (over on SoundButt) already has a hint, and there's nothing dirty about it -- it's three Phish jams from regular shows in wide circulation. Thanks for playing, and we'll see you next week for the next iteration of the MJM Hall of Fame series.

As we’re now in Phish’s eighth year of their modern incarnation (can you believe it?!), one pattern that has emerged is that the early shows of their summer campaign are mainly used as laboratories for the band, as they attempt to re-assert themselves in new ways on stage while “playing themselves into shape,” so to speak.

This is not to say that they don’t practice before tours or that these shows cannot be entertaining in their own rights (for example, the tremendous 7/24/15 show was the fourth of last summer, and both Wrigley shows and St. Paul had their share of pleasures), as much as it the acknowledgment that a band that improvises music on stage has to do things a bit differently than a band that cranks out most of their new album and a judicious selection of their greatest hits for an hour or so before saying their goodnights. Everyone that’s following the band is waiting for the first “classic show” and “monster jam,” and I have faith that both are coming, while being excited about the shows and jams they’ve given us this year.

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