PROFESSIONAL BOXING RHINO LEADS THE CHARGE IN CREATING DEFINITIVE COMPILATIONS.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Staff Writer

It always begins like this. The guys at Rhino Records who make and compile those box sets, those perfect little distillations of popular culture, will be sitting around arguing over who was better - the Sugarhill Gang or Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five - when one of them, ignoring the conversation completely, will interrupt and ask, ``Gee, why haven't we done a box set about ...''

... about, say, surf music or doo wop songs, Alice Cooper or Roy Rogers, Beat poetry or Shakespeare's soliloquies.

And typically, a few years after the question is posed, following hundreds of hours of creative brainstorming and many trips down licensing blind alleys, such a box set will appear in stores with the hope that music lovers will see it, and, in the words of Rhino special projects guru James Austin, say ``Wow.''

``I'd like to think they we go out and make things that we would want to buy,'' says Austin, a Chatsworth resident who spearheaded such box sets as ``Hot Rods and Custom Classics: Cruisin' Songs and Highway Hits'' and ``The Jack Kerouac Collection.'' < ``I always imagine myself standing in line at the record store and buying this thing, shelling out 100 bucks or whatever it is and wondering, 'Am I satisfied?' If someone opens one of my boxes and doesn't say, 'Wow,' then I've failed.''

In the past, Rhino, the West Los Angeles record company that began its life in the back of a Westwood record store, has wowed music lovers and pop culture aficionados with little touches like sculpted shag carpet on the cover of its massive seven-CD set, ``Have a Nice Decade: The '70s Pop Culture Box'' (the carpet was avocado green and harvest gold, adorned with imprints of smiley faces) and a pair of fuzzy dice inside the ``Hot Rods'' box. Rhino has also housed collections in old 45-RPM carrying cases (``Beg, Scream & Shout: The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul'') and the velvet-wrapped journal ``R-E-S-P-E-C-T: A Century of Women in Music''.

The company's most elaborate set will arrive in stores the first week of November. Titled ``Brain in a Box: The Science Fiction Collection,'' the five-disc set stands as a glowing example (and we mean that literally) of how Rhino stands apart from other record labels in its archival efforts. These guys - and this is predominately a guy thing - are dedicated to unearthing the unexpected, finding never-before-heard (and familiar) nuggets of music and culture and brightly packaging them in a way that would have made Roy Lichtenstein proud.

``Some of these sets could stand as art objects,'' says the a&r director of the reissue division of a rival company. ``I don't even like the music on some of Rhino's boxes, but I buy them because they're cool to look at.''

``Brain in a Box'' might well be Rhino's ultimate piece of pop art, a 7-inch square silver box held together by rivets and dominated by a trio of 3-D lenticular photographs of a floating brain. Move the box and the luminescent brain moves too, as if it's floating in water. Inside is a 200-page hardbound book modeled after the 1950s Big Little Book series that baby boomers will remember fondly for chronicling the sci-fi adventures of such heroes as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

Creative director Hugh Brown's stunning design work almost relegates the music to incidental status. Almost. The five discs are divided according to focus: movie themes, TV themes, sci-fi pop songs, novelty songs and incidental/lounge music. There are 113 tracks ranging from the familiar (themes from ``Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' and ``The Twilight Zone,'' Sheb Wooley's ``The Purple People Eater'') to the surprising (Ella Fitzgerald singing ``Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer'') to the truly bizarre (Sun Ra's ``Space Is the Place'').

``Even if you're a science-fiction geek who thinks he has everything, I can guarantee at least a third of this you've never seen,'' says Brown, who in addition to designing the project, helped cull the set's contents.

The ``Brain'' box, like the majority of Rhino's most interesting packages, celebrates more than music; it also salutes a niche lifestyle and the genre's die-hard devotees. The company first tried this in 1993 with ``Songs of the West,'' a four-disc box dedicated to cowboy singers like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and Western television and movie themes. ``Cowabunga! The Surf Box,'' another set supervised by Austin, followed shortly afterward, and its sales success proved that genre boxes could work if the category has enough well-heeled fanatics.

A sci-fi box, then, is a natural.

``All you have to do is go to a science-fiction convention and look at the people in the 'Star Trek' uniforms carrying phasers and you know there are people out there waiting for this box,'' Brown says without a trace of condescension. He qualifies as a sci-fi geek himself with a massive collection of robots, monster models and flying saucers.

If fans have been waiting, you couldn't blame them for being a little impatient - since Rhino has been planning its sci-fi box since March 1994. The idea sprang from the classic question - ``Gee, why haven't we done this?'' - asked when Austin and licensing specialist David McLees (a California State University, Northridge grad) were attending the South By Southwest Music convention in Austin, Texas, six years ago. During a spooky, late-night drive through the middle of nowhere, the conversation turned to UFOs and eventually to why Rhino had never attempted a science-fiction collection.

Austin, 53, a child of the 1950s who counts space mutants, old Westerns, hot rods and his wife (not necessarily in that order) as his life's passions, loved the idea and immediately began brainstorming with McLees and his friends about what such a collection should include. When he arrived home, Austin and his Rhino compatriots lugged CDs, cassettes and albums full of their favorite sci-fi songs to the office and sent out the word that they were looking for ``cool, freaky stuff.''

By the end of 1994, Austin delivered a tentative track list to the licensing department. Two years later, the results came back, and they weren't good. Many key songs remained elusive, and Austin decided to let the project sit a bit.

``It was too special for us to rush,'' he says.

Meanwhile, Brown had joined the company in 1996 and, along with designing the shag carpet for the '70s box, enthusiastically began to generate ideas for the sci-fi box.

``Originally we were going to do it as a flying saucer, where you'd unscrew the body of the saucer to get to the CDs and the book,'' Brown says. ``But practically, that just didn't work. Then I thought of the disembodied brain, which is just the cheesiest and coolest concept in the old science-fiction movies. Plus it makes for a cool title: 'Brain in a Box.' ''

Brown's idea of the three-sided, 3-D lenticular of a brain dazzled Rhino's a&r guys, but the business side was skeptical, wondering if it was financially feasible.

``They said, 'You're not going to be able to do that for the price,' '' Brown remembers. ``And I said, 'Well then, raise the price. It's worth it.' ''

And raise the price they did. What began as a five-disc set that would retail for around $69 will now hit stores with a $99.98 price tag. It's all part of the tightrope Rhino must walk as it mines the past for gold. The company wants to put out unique compilations - the ``Brain'' box will cost Rhino more in materials than any set it has ever produced - but it has to be careful not to overshoot in estimating consumer demand. Failure can be expensive.

Last year, Rhino released a six-CD collection called ``Be Thou Persuaded - Living in a Shakespearean World.'' The set featured four discs of actors performing the Bard's most famous scenes and a two-disc rendering of ``Romeo and Juliet'' in its entirety. Few were persuaded to buy.

``We thought we were onto something, what with the popularity of 'Shakespeare in Love' and Kenneth Branagh's films,'' says Rhino marketing executive Garson Foos. ``It just didn't fly. I guess CDs are just not the medium people want their Shakespeare in.''

But that's the exception. Nine out of 10 Rhino boxes make money, some with sales figures as low as 15,000. The sci-fi collection will come off the assembly line with an initial printing of about 20,000. It won't have to sell that many (although it probably will) for the company to turn a profit. The original seven-disc '70s shag-carpet set has already sold out. (The current set features a photo of the carpet on the cover.)

Austin says everything - the licensing, putting the songs in the best order, tracking down people to write essays for the liner notes (``Brain'' features a host of sci-fi greats talking about their favorite moments) - looks easy, and it should.

``I want people to think, `They threw that out. Isn't that great?' '' he says. ``But it can be a nightmare. You never stop asking yourself: 'Is it good enough?' ''

Indeed Brown, at this moment, is writing a huge disclaimer, anticipating the complaints of the obsessive fans wondering why a particular track isn't on the compilation. In some cases, Brown says, Rhino couldn't secure the licensing. (George Lucas wouldn't let the ``Star Wars'' theme go.) Legal battles between various rights-holders waylaid others, and in rare cases, Rhino just couldn't find out who owned the track.

Sometimes, too, a song had worn out its welcome.

``We'll probably hear from some people wondering why we don't have Elton John's 'Rocket Man' or David Bowie's 'Space Oddity,' '' Brown says. ``But please. Does anyone ever need to hear those songs again? We want to turn people on to the unusual.''

And while Brown waits for Gary Larson's last-second approval for a ``Far Side'' mad scientist cartoon he wants to include in the book, Austin has already cleared his desk of sci-fi materials and commenced the brainstorming sessions for his next project - a '60s pop culture box.

``It all starts over again,'' Austin says wearily, but with a wide grin on his face. ``You just change the title.''

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- cover -- color) The Brains behind the Box

Hugh Brown, Rhino Records art director

How the Rhino Records staff puts together its eclectic musical collections

(3) 'If someone opens one of my boxes and doesn't say, ``Wow,'' then I've failed.'

Chatsworth resident James Austin

Rhino Records special projects guru

(4) 'Even if you're a science-fiction geek who thinks he has everything, I can guarantee at least a third of this you've never seen.

Hugh Brown

Rhino Records creative director

(5) Rhino's five-disc compilation, ``Brain in a Box: The Science Fiction Collection,'' is a compilation of soundtracks and novelty sci-fi songs. The box set is scheduled for release in November.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer