It started as a joke.

The New Wave Polka Oktoberfest appeared to be a way for the hip folks of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to get their revenge on Fritz the Plumber, Polish Fest, bad wedding bands and accordions. And what better place to spoof the music our grandparents danced to than the dimly lit, sophisticated Kenwood Inn in the UWM Union?

But something strange happened Sunday night. A musical discovery was made by the approximately 50 people who paid a modest cover charge to view the unusual event.

The evening began with Polka Comitatus, a Milwaukee wedding band fronted by Mark (Black Dog) Shurilla, a musical gadfly known for his taste for the different and bizarre. Shurilla is a longtime member of the Blackholes, which is a variation on the local band's unprintable original name, and is a editor and publisher of the Express, a local music publication. He is also a Buddy Holly imitator.

While claiming it wants to be taken seriously, Polka Comitatus is clearly a parody band. It brought along its own bubble machine and three small neon crosses Sunday night.

While swigging Point beer from cans, the Comitatus performed "Blitzkrieg Over Kenosha," a tune about a fugitive Nazi war criminal who mistakes Kenosha for Berlin, and "In Heaven There Is No Beer." the act reached its peak with a rousing rendition of "You've Lost That Polka Feeling," sung to the old Righteous Brothers hit "You've Lost That Loving Feeling," with a lot of "aina heys" thrown in.

The Comitatus' spoofery did little to prepare the audience for the stunning musical experience that followed. Brave Combo, a band of four young men from Denton, Texas, nearly blew out the Kenwood Inn's walls with an incredible blend of polka, reggae, rock, jazz, Tex-Mex and Latin music that was anything but a joke.

The Combo wove a musical fabric never before heard in theses parts, and it frequently transfixed the audience with the feeling that something special -- on the cutting edge of creativity -- was being experienced. It was reminiscent of the first days of psychedelic music in the 1960s, when Milwaukee audiences climbed the stairs to the Avant Garde coffee house on N. Prospect Ave., to listen with rapt attention to bands such as the Velvet Whip.

Brave Combo turned tired polka melodies all Milwaukeeans know into searing and intense polka-rock rages. The group preserved the often delicate melodic lines while cranking up the tempo and volume to a fever pitch. Lead singer, guitarist, keyboard player and accordionist Carl Finch possessed a Jim Morrison-like manic intensity that drove both the musical and visual elements of the show.

Textures and styles were borrowed from all forms of music and often contrasted in dramatic counterpoint. A wild "La Bamba" was split in two by a brief version of "And the Band Played On" and followed by a quietly jazzy "Fly Me To the Moon."

When the group injected humor into its act, it was serious humor, not camp. Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" done as a polka was weird but interesting. Tennesee Ernie Ford's "16 Tons" was given a nifty latin twist, as was the old bubble-gum hit "My Girl Lollipop."

Brave Combo is a fascinating musical experiment that proves a point. The only thing wrong with polka music is the dull and listless way it is traditionally presented.