The situation with “Conceptionland,” “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him, and “Dear Friends” was slightly more complicated than I thought; it was only Side 1 of “Waiting for the Electrician.” The title track, which is all of Side 2, was missing. And on “Dear Friends” Track 6 was complete, but Track 7 was indeed missing.
As mentioned, I bought a download of “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him,” and am glad to have it. For the other two, though, I converted what I had on tape. Quality is only so-so, even after using Audacity’s filters, but since most of this material is frankly not all that great, and quality is less important with comedy than with music, I’m not about to buy those albums.
Converting the 49 (!) tracks from “Conceptionland” took quite awhile, and all those short little bits, heavily filtered, apparently destabilized Audacity — it crashed repeatedly during the last part of the job. I mean, repeatedly, sometimes three or four times in a single attempt to export a piece.
I did get it done, though. Fifty-five tracks are now MP3s on my hard drive. And I’ve shut down Audacity for a nice little rest, in hopes that whatever was causing those crashes will go away.
Next up, a tape of some of my high school friends doing their own attempts at improv comedy.