A Taste of Nostalgia From Cocktail Music : VARIOUS ARTISTS: “Bachelor’s Guide to the Galaxy” Rhino ***

If you wait long enough, you’ll find virtually everything in pop music being revived--either out of legitimate creative appreciation or as camp fascination.

Hence the rush of retrospectives devoted to novelty-tinged, adult-oriented pop from the early days of rock. Lots of record companies must believe there is truth to all this talk about a mid-’90s yearning for a glamour-tinged break from the alienation and grunge of today’s rock.

The music in these collections is drawn from a strange mix of styles--mainstream pop to dance-minded remakes of pop standards to exotic sounds designed chiefly to show off the liveliness of new hi-fi and stereo sound systems.

Rhino Records has just released a three-volume series under the umbrella term “cocktail music,” while Capitol Records has its own six-volume series titled “ultra-lounge” music.

At its best, this music is good-natured and fun. Some is even wonderfully inventive. But buyer beware: Some of the music in these collections is so middlebrow that it doesn’t even work as camp amusement.

Of the Capitol and Rhino packages, the Rhino volumes tend to put the music in the most engaging and lighthearted context. But Capitol’s “Mambo Fever” is worth a try, thanks to such unlikely Latin dance tracks as “Hooray for Hollywood (Cha-Cha)” and “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans Mambo.”

“Bachelor’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the first volume in the Rhino series, is an entertaining introduction to the cocktail/lounge concept--starting with the liner notes, which list the titles of the ‘50s and ‘60s albums that some of the 18 tracks came from. Among them: “Zounds! What Sounds!” and “Dee-Most! Hi-Fi Organ Solos With a Beat!”

The names used on the original album covers to suggest an irresistible sonic experience are equally colorful: from “Visual Sound Stereo” to “Stereo Action: The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow.”

The musical journey is equally zany. As the liner notes suggest, Dean Elliott and His Swinging Big, Big Band’s version of “Will You Still Be Mine” is such a bright merger of big band discipline and audio oddities that it combines the “orchestral explosiveness of Nelson Riddle with the percussive devilry of Spike Jones.”

The 1962 recording--in which “brass and reeds compete against shortwave signals, mechanical teeth, squeaking doors, bowling balls, hoot owls, pogo stick springs and underwater detonation”--was reportedly inspired by the rhythm of a cement mixer that Elliott heard while stuck at a Woodland Hills traffic light.

Though the whole thing wears thin, the best of the instrumental selections give you a welcome party-brightener by showcasing some of the playful sound experiments from the past. Other artists featured in Vol. 1: The Three Suns, Alvino Rey and Felix Slatkin.

Vol. 2, “Martini Madness,” mixes upbeat vocals (the Cold War novelty of Ann-Margret’s “Thirteen Women” to the R&B; push of Mel Torme’s “Comin’ Home Baby”) with dance-minded instrumentals from the likes of Quincy Jones and Les Elgart. Vol. 3, “Swingin’ Singles” is more of the same, including vocals by everyone from Peggy Lee to Robert Mitchum. Have fun.