Jerome Schooley figures the Beastie Boys aren't going to sue him over the name he chose to call his ska/reggae band.

The Cookiepuss guitarist says he and his band mates "swiped" the moniker from the Beastie Boys' 1983 Cookie Puss EP.

"We like them," he said on a recent Saturday morning. "We figured they wouldn't mind (if we used the name.)"

They shouldn't. After all, the Boys nearly got sued themselves when they named their debut EP after the name of an ice cream popular in the early 80s. Tom Carvel,

owner of Carvel's Ice Cream, maker of the Cookie Puss line, threatened to sue the Boys over the name. But they talked themselves out of it after befriending Carvel's nephew, so the story goes.

Cookiepuss's connection with the Beastie Boys ends with that reference to a little-known EP. For all intents and purposes, the bands are worlds apart.

For starters, Cookiepuss didn't form until about a year ago, 20 years after the Boys released their first EP. The guys in Cookiepuss - Schooley, singer Tony Baker, drummer Mark Glanneman and bassist Andy Finnegan - are quit a bit younger than the Beastie Boys. All in their 20s, they are about old enough to be the Boys' younger brothers, or to remember 'Fight For Your Right," whichever comes first.

And, Cookiepuss doesn't get into rap. They prefer a mix of reggae and ska, with a little bit of funk thrown in for good measure.

"It just depends on the song," says Baker. "We focus on ska and reggae, but we have funk songs. We're trying to phase them out. It's fun to play, but we need to have a focus. The majority of our songs have a ska feel."

"When we started the band, we played a lot of ska and punk and rockabilly," adds Schooley. "When we met Tony, he had a real soulful voice that was good for reggae."

The band doesn't like to pigeonhole itself, however. They get a little touchy with the labels "ska" and "reggae." They don't want to commit to any one or two or three genres.

"We try not to write anything that's too cookie-cutter," Baker says with a characteristic play on words. "We don't want to be pigeonholed. I've said that a thousand times."

Lyrically, Baker writes about "a lot of different things." More specifically, comfort, having fun and past experiences stand out in his mind.

Although they play mostly original tunes, they still throw in the occasional cover song.

"We're trying to phase them out," says Baker. "We do covers because sometimes you have to fill up time and they get the crowd going when they don't know who you are."

Cookiepuss started work in late August on their debut CD. The band hopes to have the 12-14 song album out by November.

"We're just going to do things the way they are supposed to be done," says Schooley of the album. "We're going to take it slow."

"Whatever comes to us comes to us," adds Glanneman.

"We're just going to go wherever the music takes us," says Baker.

In the meantime, the band has a demo they pass out at gigs. The three-track CD features crowd favorites "Third Dish' and "Long Night."

During the recording process for the demo, the band enlisted the help of Glanneman, who agreed to sit in and play drums. "We didn't have a drummer at that time," says Schooley.

Cookiepuss band mates liked Glanneman so much they 'wouldn't let him leave," and asked him to stay on as their drummer, Schooley jokes.

Baker is more to the point: "We shackled him in the basement."

In the future, the band hopes to put a song or two on a compilation CD Schooley and Glanemann are producing through their start-up label, Green House Records.