THE music itself evokes images of a Sunday afternoon concert in a musty-smelling auditorium, wearing scratchy new clothes and being ever mindful of a parental glare.
But the packaging is more like rumpled T-shirts and boom boxes with the volume cranked up. Way up.
Six compact disks released on the label Counter Culture are aimed at drawing 18-to 24-year-old head-bangers into the realm of classical music listeners.
American record entrepreneurs Rob Enslin, 25, and Ken Wells, 29, decided the trick was in the packaging.
The CDs are in bold black, red and white boxes with titles such as Not Bad for a Kid (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), What Does a Deaf Guy Hear? (Ludwig van Beethoven) and Long Hair Loud Music (assorted symphonies).
An album of Johann Sebastian Bach, Prolific in Every Respect, credits him with ''273 songs, chorales and arias; 260 cantatas, 246 organ works, 218 other keyboard works, 30 orchestral works, 20 children and 2 wives (not at once).'' Don't Give Up , with music of Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, notes that despite his success with ''Swan Lake'', ''The 1812 Overture'' and other pieces, his piano teacher in 1855 said: ''There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that suggested a composer.'' Counter Culture and its parent company, Intersound Entertainment, are not the first to try to lure young people to listen to classics.
''I think we're the first guys who tried to talk to somebody who's 24 years old in his own language,'' said Mr Wells, a rock musician who designed the packaging and advised Mr Enslin on writing the liner notes.