Hash Browns?

There will be no Beastie Boys music played at Geezer’s weekend poolside gigs at the Handlery this summer. “We’re trying,” says singer-guitarist Adam Gimbel, “to turn it down a little for the family-ness of it.” The Handlery Hotel is, after all, a tourist sleepover in Hotel Circle in the heart of Mission Valley. “Usually we’re all about being blasphemous. But if I were staying at a hotel being awakened by three, you know, rich, obnoxious Jewish rappers, I might be a little put out.” Instead, Geezer will stick to a menu of classic rock. “Acting our age,” Gimbel says.

“After we had talked about not doing quite as much of the less-senior-friendly material that we do, I saw a video of the Hard Rock Hotel’s pool parties, which are the most unbelievably decadent, loud things you can imagine.” Geezer covers a lot of Weezer territory, which is not exactly Lawrence Welk. But Gimbel says the band has also learned some of what he calls pool songs: “Cannonball,” by the Breeders; “Sunny Afternoon,” by the Kinks.

Geezer is not entirely a Weezer tribute band, but Gimbel says Weezer knows about them (Geezer actually opened for Weezer once) and sometimes Weezer posts Geezer gigs on their website. Does Geezer do “Hash Pipe”? “We do.” Gimbel laughs. “We played my old high school and we thought we shouldn’t say ‘hash pipe,’ so we sang ‘my hash browns’ instead. I’m sure the cafeteria ladies loved it.”

Geezer started doing Beastie covers back when the rapper’s Street Scene appearance was cancelled due to Adam Yauch’s cancer diagnosis. Geezer, in turn, performed a cancer benefit. “It was so fun that when we went back to doing what we normally do, we decided to have a break in the middle of all our shows now where we rap.”

How did the Handlery gig come about? “We got asked to play a beer festival they did there late spring. We played first but apparently went over best.” That led to them being invited to play the poolside shows. “We’re doing seven Sundays there over the summer. It’s a really good time.”

Geezer’s website hinted that there might be a surprise by the end of summer. “We were trying to get a few different people from L.A.,” Gimbel says. We hadn’t heard back from the people we wanted most, so we put something online that we’d have a big surprise but I honestly don’t know.” He laughs. “I think it’s probably gonna be sort of an all-star end-of-summer jam,” which may include students from the San Diego School of Rock. “Part of our shtick is that we say these are our grandkids, and they come onstage and they’re better than we are.”