RuPaul's Go-Go Box Classics.

Have you checked the dance-music section of your local CD store lately? It's totally out of control. Too many compilations offer the same radio hits while too few cheesy babes in bikinis and boys in briefs deliver the goods. Unless you're willing to shell out for overpriced bootlegs and imports, your choices are generally limited to overplayed pop anthems or tracks so minimal and underground that you'd never want them m your home.

RuPaul's Go-Go Box Classics is one of the few chain-store-accessible dance discs that offer something special. Unlike most oldies compilations. which tend to come across either as laundry lists of familiar crossover ditties or as if they were tossed together from whatever the compiler could license cheaply, this idiosyncratic collection is clearly the product of one queen's twisted -- but on-target -- taste. RuPaul pulls together the less obvious jams that other collections have overlooked, quirky groove morsels that have been played on the radio but not to death. These are the records that -- like RuPaul herself -- walk that fine line between freaky and funky, mainstream and mad.

Inspired by Miss Thang's mid-'80s stint as a go-go dancer, this 18-track bonanza packs the fun and frivolity of a homemade party tape onto one CD. Rather than taking the purist approach of those "gayer than gay" collections that feature little more than cookie-cutter hi-NRG, Ru mixes things up to far greater effect. Where else but here can you find Aretha Franklin, Nina Hagen, George Clinton, and Diana Ross on the same disc?

What's even more fabulous is that Ru's proved that all this soul and strangeness belong together. You wouldn't think that Kool & the Gang's "Tonight" should be followed by the Eurythmics' "There Must Be an Angel (Playing With My Heart)," but it is, and it works. The live version of "Party Lights" by then-fierce Natalie Cole sounds just right next to "Don't You Want My Love" by one-hit-wonder Nicole, and the minor hits by Teddy Pendergrass, the Pointer Sisters, and the aforementioned legends are better than you remember.

The only downside to this CD is that several cuts appear as radio edits that fade far too soon. Had Ru done without a seven-minute Paula Abdul remix, she could have allowed tracks not found elsewhere on CD -- masterpieces by Debbie Jacobs and Ann-Margret (!) -- to reach their peaks. A queen should know there's nothing worse than "disco interruptus."