Did I forget to stay...deeee...mented?

A few weeks ago, I embarked on the project of converting my 100+ cassettes of the Doctor Demento show, the soundtrack of my early teen years, to digital. From 1985 the music speaks to me, reminding me to get weird: Hairless Sister, Walk on the Kosher Side, I Ran Over All the Smurfs, No Anchovies Please, 99 Dead Baboons. Aged 13, I lay on my little bed, headphones plugged into my clock radio, and for the first time I heard Monty Python and George Carlin and Frank Zappa. I learned the meaning of "zydeco" and "filk". I was titillated by risqué songs like Making Love in a Subaru, Let's Make Love in a Microwave (you be the master and I'll be the slave), the ubiquitous Lady Madonna parodies:

Lady Madonna, lying on the bed.
Everyone in showbusiness says you give...parties.

Yes, I was a little pervert, even then.

These are the songs and stories that shaped who me is, that inspired me to mismatch my socks and put a seven in my name. Such a rush of nostalgia! I know so many, too many, of the lyrics, though I haven't heard most of them in 20 years. The sound hisses and wobbles, I've had to evict one spider and make one impromptu masking-tape splice, dust bunnies lurk in the crannies of the cassettes, but it's nearly all listenable.

I've got 248 songs so far, from 18 tapes—I'm skipping the songs I own legitimately, which is a surprisingly large percentage—with many many more to go. The goal is to put a clean version of every song in iTunes, then archive the actual shows on 2 DVDs.

Since ceciliaregent is interested, and others might be, I'll describe the process I'm using to import them. ( But since many others might not be, I'll stick it behind a cut. )