Internet Obsession Number Five Billion

Like any red-blooded American male, I love me the Internet (or, as it's called, The Internets). True, I often treat my computer as a very large stereo system ("mp3 player" for those of you born after 1990). I was born at just the wrong time in history to still be part of the vinyl record era, so I have many important musics in that medium. But when I was growing up, Audio Tapes were the rage. So I got many of those. Then CDs were introduced. I bought a million or so. Now it's MP3s, and I have reached the zenith.

True, they'll introduce a new medium in a few years - sub-cutaneous organic protein-chain music or something - but I plan to just buy a converting program to smoosh my mp3s into the "amino3" format. This is what I'm doing with my CDs. I have about 1000 CDs and I've spent the past few years ripping them into my computer (and then re-ripping them into my Ipod).

I still haven't acquired the technology to convert those magnetic Audio Tapes into mp3s. I'm sure the devices exist, I just haven't done the research (holding aside the probable fact that I won't be able to figure out the necessary doodads). Until then, I still have lots of old music that's inaccessible: especially my old comedy tapes.

As should be blindingly obvious, I'm a fan of novelty/comedy music. The good stuff. Allan Sherman, Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Ray Stevens, and the Silver Age King: Weird Al Yankovic. I have many tapes of these dudes - legitimately acquired through the teenage art of taping off the radio.

These songs are hard to find and expensive to buy. And I search the web for any snippets of these songs - which I own - in any form (wav, mp3, what-have-you). And two days ago I hit pay-dirt.

Captain Wayne's Mad Music Show is a Dr. Demento style radio show that posts its episodes ONLINE for FREE (or is that "FOR FREE"?). Free, baby, free.

I have since acquired one of the el-dorados of my searching quests: the insanely awesome Stevens and Grdnic "Mr. Wizard" sketch.

The site has a lot of good info on the whole novelty song genre (as well as having the playlists of Dr. Demento going back to the early 80s). So the favorites I mentioned above are again presented, hypertext-style: Allan Sherman, Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Ray Stevens, Weird Al Yankovic.

I've been downloading all the shows (gigs galore) and it makes for a good weeks' worth of listening.