BEST JUKEBOX

The meager buck you have to kill between bands won't buy a beer. Pinball and Ms. Pac-Man wreak havoc with your sore shoulder. No patience for the pool table; you've already poked one too many a sloshed patron with your cue tonight. What's left? A couple of songs on the jukebox. The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Al Green, Nirvana, the Who, even Sammy Davis, Jr. and Sinatra are all there. But it's discs by active and retired local musicians -- who graced Churchill's stage many a time -- that offer a much-needed education to those unschooled in the Miami scene of yore. An eponymous pre-major-label album by this city's onetime country girl, Mary Karlzen, waits to be taken for a spin. The now-dissolved Goods' mock-rock opera Five Steps to Being Signed continues to thumb its nose at the music industry. The best sampler of past glory, though, can be heard on the 1993 compilations Music Generated by Geographical Seclusion and Beer and Sun Brewed Action Music. Recorded in this very club, they offer a showcase for old-timers such as Charlie Pickett, Kreamy 'Lectric Santa, I Don't Know, Quit, Holy Terrors, and the Chant. Sure a dollar doesn't go very far anymore, but for a few good songs from the good old days? That's a sound investment.