Phish.net and the Mockingbird Foundation present:

The first annual Mockingbird Mystery Jam Madness Tournament!
The first round begins today (Friday, March 17th) at 5 PM ET / 2 PM PT.

RULES:
1) The required answer format for each round will be announced at the time the clips are posted on the blog. Each participant gets one guess per day, with the next day beginning at midnight ET (certain rounds may provide hints, 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. It shouldn't be hard to keep this legitimate.

2) The first 16 participants to answer correctly advance to the next round – if 16 or fewer participants answer correctly, all will advance. Each 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, 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 enters successive rounds. 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, 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 Mockingbrid Foundation. Even $5 donations add up – 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. And $20 is probably less than the amount of money you lit on fire submitting your bracket for that other tournament! 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 time and energy needed to put events like these on, free of charge, even when real life gets in the way. 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 1 CLIPS:
The first 16 people to email the correctly identified songs and dates of these three clips will advance to the second round. These clips are connected by a theme, but that doesn't have to be part of your answer. Go!

ANSWER: As many of you figured out, the first round was the Holy Trinity of Ghosts: from 11/17/97 McNichols, 7/2/98 Christiania (I say it's better than 7/6/98, but decide for yourself!), and 5/22/00 RCMH. But I did something dumb: one user submitted a slightly incorrect answer on Saturday but corrected it early Sunday, and I forgot to count him in – I thought we were at 15 in this morning when I received two correct answers around the same, and told one user he was in and the other he wasn't (based on time stamp). But rather than revoke someone's advancement over my mistake, and keep another out who emailed moments later, here's what I'll do: we have 16 seeds, #1 - #16, plus two wildcards. I'm going to email each of the 16 seeds, top to bottom, one by one, but waiting 10-15 minutes or so before I send the next email. The sooner you got me your correct response, the more of a head start you'll have in Round 2. So be on the lookout for the Round 2 information on the blog, and especially be on the lookout for an email with a private Soundcloud link if you want to take advantage of your headstart! Once the 16 seeds have received their private links via email, I'll embed the Soundcloud player into the blog so the wildcards can have at it too, and everyone can listen there if they like. Please don't worry if you're a double digit seed or wilcard – I do want the higher seeds to be rewarded for their speed, but the second round will be a bit more difficult anyway so it won't be impossible to make it to the next round if you have a worse seed. The first 8 correct responses will make it to Round 3, and will be subsequently reseeded based on the order in which I receive their correct responses. More information coming soon, but for now, congratulations to the Select Sixteen Plus Two*!:
*I'm being cautious about not using trademarked phrases here...

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.