By ELIOT WILDER / A deserted amusement park. Abandoned railway cars. A broken blue guitar. An antique bed in an empty, darkened room. Long forgotten John Denver songs. These are but a few of Mark Kozelek's favorite things. Add to the list an album made by his band Red House Painters in 1997 but not released until now. It's fortunate for those of us who love the band that "Old Ramon" was rescued from oblivion, because it, like the rest of the five albums in Red House Painters' canon, is dark, strange and brilliant. But why the long wait? It's a tale, as told by singer and guitarist Kozelek, that's every bit as protracted as many of his group's songs.

"We always spend months making records," Kozelek said in his lonesome foghorn of a voice, "and we spent a pretty long time on 'Old Ramon,' from the fall of '97 to the spring of '98. We were going over budget, which was a good sign - at least the record company was paying for the over budget. But just as we finished it, Island was merging with Mercury. They fired about 90 employees and dropped a lot of bands and subsidiary labels. They held onto us for a while - they put us on the shelf until they could figure out whether to drop us.

"Finally, they dropped the subsidiary label we were on here in America called Supreme. And Supreme held onto us for about another year, trying to find themselves a deal, which was really hard for us because we had a lot of other labels interested in signing us."

Ultimately, Supreme let go of the band, but the band couldn't get Island to let go of "Old Ramon" - unless Red House Painters could come up with the scratch. "We'd spent close to $200,000 on it," Kozelek said. "By indie standards, that's a lot of money. No other label was willing to buy the album, either.

"We got a lawyer who went to Island and said, 'Look, you really fucked these guys. You made these guys sit around for a couple of years. C'mon, give us a break.' And Island finally did. It was a big, big legal battle. It took a really long time, but finally Subpop is putting it out."

After all this time, Kozelek is happy to see the album released, because, as he says with a sighing laugh, he can finally appease all those fans who for years "thought we'd been lying about even having a record."

"For the longest time I didn't want to listen to 'Old Ramon' because there's been so much ugliness attached to it," he continued. "Now the positive thing about it is that it's incentive for the band to get back together."

Kozelek himself hasn't exactly been idle these past few years. On top of portraying the bass player in the recent Cameron Crowe film "Almost Famous," he's also got a small role in Crowe's upcoming "Vanilla Sky," acting opposite Tom Cruise.

But his heart is still in his music, and to that end he's released two solo CDs - "Rock and Roll Singer" and "What's Next to the Moon" (an entire album of AC/DC songs performed acoustically) - as well as producing a tribute album to John Denver called "Take Me Home." Although his cover choices may seem a bit odd - he's also done virtually unrecognizable versions of everything from Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs" to Yes' "Long-Distance Run Around" - they fit with his basic sensibility of rescuing what some might consider discards. But to Kozelek, who's often been compared to more "serious" artists like Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake, these are not just silly love songs.

"I grew up way out in the suburbs of northeast Ohio," he said. "I listened to James Taylor, Jim Croce and Cat Stevens - that's the stuff I knew and I never explored any further. Any comparisons I've had to Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake is just a coincidence. I've listened to those artists, and I think they're great. But the stuff that I grew up with is to me still a lot stronger."

Lest anyone think that Kozelek is completely uncool for devoting an entire record to testosterone-fueled heavy metalers AC/DC, all you need to do is put on "What's Next to the Moon" and be transported. These are deeply felt tunes, performed in all earnestness, which he's salvaged from hard rock's highway to hell.

"I like to take songs that people wouldn't think I'd pick," Kozelek concluded, "turn them around and make them my own."

And so they are. Unmistakeably.