Phish.net and the Mockingbird Foundation present:

The first annual Mockingbird Mystery Jam Madness Tournament!
The Championship Round started weeks ago (Wednesday, April 26th, at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET) but is somehow still going...

RULES:
1) Each participant gets one guess per day, with the next day beginning at midnight ET, irrespective of the timing of any hints provided. Answers may be submitted on the blog as a comment (don't do it if you're not sure!) or by email. If you are no longer participating in the tournament, i.e. unless you are @bl002e or @ChalkDustTeacher, do not post guesses or hints, joking or serious, in the comments section of the Blog – guesses by any non-Finalist posted to the Blog 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.

2) The first participant to answer correctly will advance to the Championship Round.

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 four rounds, we have received a few donations – hopefully there are more to come? Please let me know if you have made a donation so I can thank you – I don't have access to the list of donations, and it's hard to distinguish regular donations from those related to this tournament! Thanks so much to the few folks that have donated – you're truly making a difference.

FINALS CLIPS INFO:
The first participant to post the correctly identified songs and dates to the blog or email them to me is our winner. These clips are connected by a theme that can be used to help solve the puzzle – the stated theme for this week is "Devotion to a Band."

FINALS PARTICIPANTS:

After four grueling rounds of jam identification and a well-deserved bye week, we've finally reached the top of the Giant Mountain – but only one participant will have their face chiseled in stone forever. In one of the most unlikely Championship Round matchups ever, we have a real David vs. Goliath match-up; the Master vs. the Apprentice; the Host vs. the Contestant; the Blue Chipper vs. the Cinderella Story. Who will win? Will it be @bl002e, hailing from the USA, winner of seven MJMs, former MJM host, the only MJM Emeritus left in the field, who continues to crush the competition? Or will it be @ChalkDustTeacher, hailing from Canada, not a single MJM win on his résumé, shaping young minds across the Great White North, a beacon of light in the darkness of the eternal winter, who teaches us all a lesson by winning his first MJM on the biggest of stages? Let's find out... Good luck!

FINALS CLIPS:

FINALS HINT: Four for four.

SECOND HINT, UPDATED TO MAKE THIS END SOONER:

ANSWER: It took two and a half weeks and two and a half hints, but we finally have our winner of the first annual Mockingbird Mystery Jam Madness Tournament: MJM Emeritus and former MJM Host, @bl002e. @bl002e may not have been helped out by the stated theme, "Devotion to a Band," or even by the first hint, "Four for four," but once I posted a picture of the band and subsequently labeled it with bandmates' names as points on a Cartesian plane, with the two axes indicating the years in which the clips were performed and the order of clips (1-4), he quickly closed the gap on @ChalkDustTeacher and ultimately surpassed him in attaining the answer: Piper 6/27/10, Tweezer 5/15/90, Mike's Song 10/25/95, Fluffhead 7/24/99. Each of the four songs begins with the same letter as the band members' nicknames: Piper = Page, Tweezer = Trey, Mike's Song = Mike, Fluffhead = Fish. Page's name is first on the order axis (Piper was the first clip) and highest on the year axis (2010 is the latest clip); Trey's name is second on the order axis (Tweezer was the second clip) and lowest on the year axis (1990 is the earliest clip), etc.

For winning the MMJM tournamnent, we will make a $100 to the Mockingbird Foundation in @bl002e's name (thanks to everyone else who donated, and for those that haven't, it's never too late!). He also wins two LivePhish codes, and at some point in the near future we'll interview him to talk Phish and post it to the blog. Congrats to Brian, and thanks to everyone for playing along!

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.