The Mentat wiki at http://www.ludism.org/mentat/ is full of related memory tricks. I call them "tricks" - they really do work. I've used memory palace and peg systems to memorise fairly long chunks of recital.
The thing that's always confused me about the "story" approach to memorising is what happens the next time you do it. Isn't the previous story still there in your memory, contradicting and interfering with any new one?
I was worried about the same thing when I started. What I found out is that the most recent memory is much much fresher than the past, and its very rare that you will mix up stories from the past with the ones you just memorized. Seems like our memories has a time dimension to it.
Memrise helped me get me off my feet, and then I created my own objects/actions for each card because I had no idea who half of those people are.