BY JUD COST

Van Dyke Parks sneaked into San Francisco Friday night with little fanfare for a rare live performance and still managed to fill every folding chair in the cozy Swedish American Hall (capacity 225) with devotees of his delightfully off-kilter brand of Americana. As the mushroom-shaped lights dimmed overhead in this musty, unheated room-whose ornate, carved-wood filigree made it seem more Old World Lutheran parish hall than rock venue-the rotund, avuncular Parks plopped himself down in front of a baby grand piano and began thumbing through a large stack of sheet music.

Accompanied by cello, electric bass and the fine violin of Olivier Manchon from tonight's opening act, Brooklyn-based French popsters Clare & the Reasons, this was to be a thoroughly orchestrated evening of twinkling gems from the man best known as Brian Wilson's lyrical foil for the Beach Boys' long-lost, recently reconstituted, 1967 masterpiece, Smile. "Old age and treachery can sometimes overcome youth and ability," twinkled Parks in the direction of his babyfaced backing trio as he prefaced his magical "codger-rock" selections with rambling commentary, much of it muttered off-mic like the old man rummaging through dusty shoeboxes of memorabilia in Samuel Beckett's 1958 play Krapp's Last Tape.

At one point in the late '60s, Parks and fellow Los Angeles tunesmith Randy Newman were marketed as the brave young future of rock music by Warner Bros. records. And so they were, to some extent, although both began as word-of-mouth cult faves rather than instant pop phenoms. I once told Newman, now an Oscar-winning soundtrack composer, that his music sounded like its melodies came from Stephen Foster with lyrics by Lenny Bruce. "That sounds about right, as long as you don't get the batting order reversed," Newman laughed. But how to describe the unique oeuvre of Van Dyke Parks? That he's done to pop music what Stephen Sondheim would soon do to the Broadway musical via the jarring tonalities of Sweeny Todd and Into The Woods?

Oddly enough, both Newman and Parks have written tunes called "Sail Away." While Newman's is an ironic description of a 19th century slave trader urging native Africans to join him on a great adventure ("In America every man is free/To take care of his home and his family/You'll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree"), Parks' song is more ethereal with echoes of "Surf's Up," the brilliant work he co-wrote with Wilson, originally intended for Smile. "Oh island in the sun/What I don't know won't hurt me none/When it's all said and done...That perfect host in harmony/We'll raise a toast to what's left of my memory/When will my ship come in?"

Parks dedicated "Orange Crate Art," the title-song of a 1995 album he shared with Wilson, to the "dust bowl" California migration of the Okies during the Great Depression of the 1930s, perfectly detailed in John Steinbecks' masterpiece, The Grapes Of Wrath. "It's ridiculous to think the poor will always be with us," said Parks before he played the  tune that details the colorful paintings stickered on the ends of wooden orange boxes. Parks also chuckled that his recent conversion to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal recovery program had coincided with receiving his first Social Security check.

Though Parks pokes fun at himself-"musical curiosity: boundless, abilities: marginal," he describes his skills behind the 88-it's clear he has the chops of a concert pianist. When added to a singing voice that sometimes sounds like it should be coming through a megaphone, a la crooners from the 1920s, it's an irresistible force that welcomes you on board that never-ending bus ride, best described on "America" by Paul Simon ("They've all come to look for America"). With every song Van Dyke Parks peels off the stack of charts before him, it's more apparent he's as much a national treasure as the things he describes in his haunting, evocative melodies.