Everyone likes to pretend to be someone else for Halloween!

It started with three of us. I was driving, while Matt and Francisco held down the passenger duties of radio selection and wry commentary, respectively. With a Spotify Destroy Boys playlist spilling through the speakers, we cruised east to Burning Beard Brewing in El Cajon for pregame activities, before the Freak Show kicked off at Lions Den Tattoo in Lemon Grove. Currently under Grammy consideration for Best Rock Performance for their song “Shadow,” Destroy Boys would be appearing undercover at this late-October Halloween event, temporarily renamed for the evening as “Create Girls.”

Suddenly, Matt yelled out “Siouxsie Sioux!”

What?

“Yeah, she sounds like Siouxsie Sioux from Siouxsie and the Banshees,” he said, referring to Destroy Boys singer Alexia Roditis.

Matt is one of those friends with vast musical knowledge and an equally extensive record collection, so I had to take his word for it — at least for the moment. Later, I put on some Siouxsie Sioux to compare. He wasn’t wrong: they both sound justly robust. However, Roditis’ lungs and lyrics billow with a more middle-fingered attitude.

“We went to Burning Beard before the last show at Lions Den, too,” Francisco reminded us before pouring some kind of hazy IPA down his throat. I didn’t really remember, but I believed him, too. That show must have been at least six years ago. Francisco used to be the wizard behind the curtain of The Industry, a short-lived but loud music venue during a not-so-distant local punk rock era. Everyone remembers him as the minister of punk, always rocking Vans, a scally cap, and a clerical collar when he used his ministry in the Methodist church as a means to open a venue. This divine move helped keep his connection with the punk community tight long after the venue closed.

Once in Lemon Grove, I pulled into the parking lot of an auto body shop that was closed for the day. A murder of crows flew overhead in the late afternoon sky, cawing away to the west. “We parked in this exact same spot last time too,” Francisco noted. It seemed we were living on some kind of weird recursive timeline, packed with episodes of déjà vu, that quickly twisted into an even more Bizarro World scene.

As we made our way to the show, Matt said, “Jeff is going to meet us outside. New Jeff.” Wait, New Jeff? What happened to Old Jeff? Old Jeff used to be Matt’s neighbor. Old Jeff had long wavy hair and red-red-wine stained teeth. So who was this new Jeff we were waiting for at the gate? Well of course: he was Matt’s new neighbor, whose name was also Jeff. A few minutes later, we saw New Jeff strolling our way, his short hair hiding under a hat, his over-the-top friendly demeanor cheerfully exposed. “Jeff offered to drive,” Matt said. “He doesn’t drink.”

We entered the event space, jammed into the gap between Lions Den and one of about two-hundred Lemon Grove auto repair shops. A small stage held the band No Bueno. Many punks had been salivating over this show for quite some time, and much of the crowd was wearing Halloween costumes. The stacked bill featured bands like Oatmeal, Project Sellout (PSO), and Destroy Boys/Create Girls. Local musician David Orozco was playing in each of the aforementioned bands, so it was a busy night for the drummer/bassist.

Hardcore outfit PSO took the stage dressed in country western accoutrements, creating another offbeat sight for my coconut to try to comprehend. Eventually, I settled in, flowering up to a brick wall next to Matt and New Jeff. We watched a mosh pit spinning with costumed killer clowns, a couple of priests, an orange traffic cone, a spotted cow, an angel, jesters, and a green alien, all while an actual magician tried to bum smokes from the crowd for a trick. The Freak Show was officially set into motion.

As the night wore on and bodies intertwined in a packed space, Destroy Boys/Create Girls jumped into the lights with a fittingly feedback-filled, broken strings/busted amps headline set. “Somebody get me a tequila shot,” singer Roditis called out. Nothing seemed to be going right, yet the band was able to pull it together and deliver, with the struggling amps eventually crunching out all the crowd-requested songs. “These are all covers of Destroy Boys, because we hate them,” guitarist Violet Mayugba joked. Between the two broken guitars and the broken amp, I’d say “Create Girls” blew their cover, what with all the destruction that went down. The jig was up. I knew those fuckers liked to destroy shit. Especially boys.