Spreading their name and getting exposure are the band's plans while awaiting some break that could lead to records and concert tours. "Of course we'd love to play concerts. One night, 6000 dollars!" Healy says. "It would sure beat playing everynight in front of a bunch of drunks."

"Musically, we're fine," says Buzz. "But in other ways, we need a lot more before we go anywhere. You need some image to hype. We haven't developed that yet. And you need original material. We don't really have that yet either." The stage at the Oxford Ale House is so cramped with equipment that there is not enough room for a two-step, let alone spectacular leaps, but the band feels that playing constantly will let a more natural personal style emerge. "We're getting a good feel for the music we like best," Glenn says. "Country rock, like Eagles, Jackson Browne and Gram Parsons have been working out well."

A record deal fell through in August when the producer who was backing them had a serious auto accident and left the business, and now, the Sweat Band is doing some recording of original songs by Bancroft and his brother Gordon. Kent is taking a producing course at the Orson Welles Cinema that includes use of a studio, but the group has to pay for each record they press.

They plan to send as many as possible out to local FM radio stations, rock reviewers, record companies--anyone who will listen. "If I can afford 20 copies, I'll send out 20 copies," Gordon says. "You get as many logs into the fire as you can, and then see what happens."

In the meantime, they keep playing. Thoughts of what to do if the group goes nowhere plague all, but they rarely discuss it. No one has set a time commitment of, say, two years before moving on. "If I quit, I guess I could do carpentry, or build speakers," Glenn says, "But I'm not planning on it."

"You've just got to keep playing," Joe says. "It is frightening to think about what could happen. What if the other guys all knocked up girls and had to get married? Where would I be? I guess I'd just go play with someone else."

The threat of instability was eased some when Rudy Cecelak, the drummer, decided that his marriage would not make him leave the group. "I enjoy this more than any kind of work I might do," he says. "I could play for the rest of my life."

But middle-aged rock drummers are an endangered species, and there is an undertone of urgency that permeates discussion of their work--time could run out on them, after all. So they play the bars and they play them well. They bring in their own fans but they bring in enough drinkers to make them a good investment. And they wait for the right song, the right time, the right listener.

Walking through Harvard, shortly before Thanksgiving, members of the Sweat Band accidentally wandered through a touch football game in front of Winthrop House. Their apologies were interrupted when a few of the football players recognized them. "Hey, you guys are from the Sweat Band, aren't you?" one said. "You're pretty good."

It made their day.