Maybe you’ve seen Secret Seven front man Zach Goode around town dressed up as an old man, playing bass and singing for Weezer tribute band Geezer. Maybe you were one of the 10,000 in the crowd to see them onstage at Cox Arena with Weezer in 2008. “Geezer is coming to your town to steal your Depends and date your grannies,” warns the band.
Geezer gives you rock the way that it was meant to be done: by senior citizens. The band combines all of the excitement of the 1980s with the nostalgia of the long-forgotten era of the 1990s, as done by musicians in their nineties. Weezer and other rock and roller hits, fan favorites, nurses, naps, and medication are all in a night’s work for the world’s oldest (or at least most aged) cover band.
If you don’t think they sound just like the real Weezer, you should have your hearing checked out, sonny. The act began when people arrived in droves to see locals Rookie Card play Weezer’s classic Blue Album for a benefit at the world-famous Casbah. Instead, they were greeted by old men offering Werther’s from deep checkered pockets.
The group retired to Florida after just two shows but were resurrected four score and seven years later, with Zachary Goode Sr. on bass guitar. Radio station FM94.9 asked them to host auditions for Weezer’s 2008 Hootenanny, where Weezer was letting lucky fans play with them onstage in each city of their tour.
Now, the old-timers have the rare opportunity to brag about actually playing onstage with the band whose songs they cover in front of 10,000 youngsters (except that they can’t remember any of it). “Their singer, Rivers Cuomo, ended up asking me about the cookies I was passing out onstage in front of 10,000 grandkids while everyone was getting set up,” recalls Gimbel.
“A short clip of Zachary and our nurse [bassist Zachary Goode’s wife Marrisa] from that night ended up in their video for the song ‘I’m Your Daddy.’”
Another project, Geezer from the Crypt, debuted September 17, 2010, at Bar Pink, owned by former Rocket From the Crypt frontman John Reis. The Cover Me Badd crew transforms into senior citizens, playing the music of their semi-namesake.
Geezer was nominated as Best Tribute Band at the 2010 San Diego Music Awards. "We lost to a Sublime cover band," says Goode, “so we walked on stage anyway pretending we were senile and thought we had won.” Geezer was nominated again for the same category in 2011.
“I always said that I’d never do any Cover Me Badd acts seriously, since we spend more time making fun of those who do,” says Gimbel. “But Geezer just keeps getting better and never gets old...so to speak.” Indeed, they found themselves headlining slot at San Francisco's famed Great American Music Hall on July 20, 2013. “A friend of mine books shows up there and owes us a favor, so he put together a ’90s covers night and wanted us to go last, so it looks like we’re the big, popular headliners, even though we’ve never played there.”
The ornate 5000-square-foot concert hall opened in 1907 and has hosted thousands of acts, from Count Basie to Chuck Berry, the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, the Ramones, and Arcade Fire.