There's a fortune to be found in the dime store.

By poking around the cheap-oh records at a Woolworth's in his hometown of Texarkana, Texas, Carl Finch discovered the polka persuasions of Brave Combo -- a party band with a purpose.

"I was in college in 1974, trying to figure out why I didn't like the direction of commercial music," Finch said over the phone from his current home in Denton, Texas. "I was bored with the radio and couldn't find anything in normal record stores, so I started shopping bargain bins. There was one store in Texarkana -- a Woolworth's -- that had the oddest assortment of three-for-a-dollar albums: real weird stuff like Woody Woodbury live at some comic club, a record called Music For Two Sleepy People. But at the same time I was coming across a lot of Midwestern Chicago-type polka records.

"I was really getting turned on to that stuff, and at the same time I was getting worried about myself," said Finch, who sings and plays accordion and keyboards with Brave Combo. The band will perform at 10:15 tonight as part of an Oktoberfest celebration at FitzGerald's, 6615 W. Roosevelt Rd., in Berwyn. The Polka Dots, an acoustic version of Brave Combo, will christen FitzGerald's beer garden at 8 p.m. Bock beer and bratwurst will be served.

Like brew and brats, the raw European sounds of polka records appealed to Finch. "I like the way the accordion sounded, in the way a good accordion player can make it sound," Finch said. "It was a combination of that, discovering the music and remembering the times when I would drive around Texarkana with my friend in his dad's car. We would listen to Lawrence Welk and his organ player Bob Ralston, who would play these weird versions of "Tico Tico." We'd go by the 7-Eleven, get a sandwich out of the steamer and hop into the car, listening to these weird tapes. It was like a Fellini movie."

"We'll lock into a polka and everybody will feel the upbeat, and they're aware of what makes a polka what it is. On a good night, the audience will take what we do as seriously as a Clash audience did. It will be more than just party, party, party. I think we are a great party band, but I would like to be appreciated for more than that."

Finch formed Brave Combo in 1979. He recruited Mitch Marine on power drums, washboard and vocals, ex-Cobra Jeffrey Barnes on all horns and vocals, and Lyle Atkinson on bass and tuba. In January, Bubba Hernandez replaced Atkinson.

If you think the intent and instrumentation are kooky, give a hard listen to Brave Combo's respectfully eclectic approach to assorted musical forms. On No Sad Faces, their second chutzpatic release on Four Dots Records, they turn the theme from "Rosemary's Baby" into a waltz, offer a polka version of "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida," go punk on "Beer Barrel Polka" and even have the nerve to turn the Christmas carol "O Holy Night" into a cha-cha.

"My morther's upset with me about "O Holy Night," Finch said with a laugh. "That's the only song that she won't listen to."

On the surface, what's often overlooked in the strange musical selection is Brave Combo's commitment to their craft. "There's a certain feeling we get from playing this music -- like now we're working on a merengue (a fast Latin musical form popular in the Dominican Republic), and we've found we can lock ourselves into a groove of why these people were playing this music to begin with. And sometimes, when you're performing, you can feel that you've brought the audience into that groove, too. Some nights it's incredible.

By choosing such an obscure musical route, has Brave Combo danced themselves into a non-commercial corner? "It was real hard in the beginning to get and audience to listen and understand what we were trying to do," Finch said. "So we had to do things to spice up the shows and get their attention. Now, in a three-hour show, we do maybe three polkas. The rest will be original stuff (check out their reggae-tinted "Ice Machine in the Desert") or different things like a cha-cha version of (The Beatles') "No Reply." What we're doing right now is trying to get away from the parody thing, especially with the rise in popularity of Weird Al Yankovic. We don't want to be associated with that. That never was what Brave Combo was about, except from the point of view to grab your attention."

Some people still miss the punch line.

"I picked up a copy of the Polka News the other day -- I didn't even know they existed -- and they're talking about how national bands like Brave Combo prove that polka isn't a dying form," Finch said. "And last week the North Texas State Fair opened in Denton, and they kicked the thing off with a parade. So we've got this marching band, which we can do at any moment. We went behind my house, which is two blocks from the route, jumped in the parade and finished out the route with them. The next day I read in the paper that we won first place as the most colorful entry. They had a trophy for us and everything. Well, we never registered, and we even dropped out before the parade was over because I was afraid my accordion was getting too hot.

"It seems lots of odd things always happen to us."