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Dennis Drew, keyboardist of pop band 10,000 Maniacs, just had an accident.

"I was trimming my beard, and I accidentally took a chunk of it off," he reported. "I guess I could probably create some interesting styles with it now. Maybe I should just go for the goofy look or an Abe Lincoln look, ha ha. What do you think?"

Whatever. Nothing about the Jamestown five-piece surprises me anymore. For one thing, the band sounds nothing like their name.

"Oh that," Drew says. "When you pick out a name, you really don't have any idea that you're going to be around 11 years later and have to explain it!" Drew said, laughing. "We picked it out from a list of movie titles. The only concept behind it is that we wanted to set ourselves apart from the other bands in town who were doing Lynyrd Skynyrd or Pink Floyd covers. We tried to pick something that would identify us as part of the underground, new wave, punk movement." The band's roots can be traced back to a small Jamestown Community College radio station.

"Steve (Gustafson, bass) and I were doing a radio station that everybody who was cool listened to, and Rob (Buck, guitars) and Natalie (Merchant, vocals) found us through that.

Since then the band has added Jerome Augustyniak on drums.