You don’t want to be outside the venue when the End It set starts. Finish that cigarette quick. If you need to take a shit, take a shit early. Make sure you’re in the room when the Baltimore hardcore band first steps onstage, or else you’ll miss my favorite part of the show: Frontman Akil Godsey belting the hell out of seemingly whatever song is stuck in his head at that exact moment. The first time I saw End It, it was Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” A couple of times, he did Smiths songs. One glorious occasion, it was “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.” The last time I saw End It, Godsey sang “Pieces Of Me” — not the Ashlee Simpson original but the Rare Essence go-go cover that was all over DC rap and R&B radio in the mid-’00s. (The intonations are just slightly different.) For a brief moment, Godsey gets to show the world that he can sing, an act that he doesn’t often get a chance to do on actual End It songs. The song is always different, but the ritual is the same. Godsey gets as far as the first chorus, and then the first riff kicks in and the mayhem begins. It’s so much fun.
