In Defence Of An Embarrassing Past

by James Wells

My middle name is Barry. I have no problem with the name Barry, I‘m sure there are a lot of wonderful people in the world called Barry, but I am not particularly enamoured with the name. In fact I have always found it a little embarrassing, never really told anyone about it growing up and I rarely do to this day. The reason I keep my middle moniker quiet is because I am named after much-loved crooner Barry Manilow. My Mother is a huge “Fanilow” and listened to a lot of Barry throughout her pregnancy. Thankfully my Father, being of an incisive and considerate disposition, wouldn’t agree to it being my first name for which I am eternally grateful. I sometimes pretend my middle name is Barry after Barry White but I am rarely believed.

Embarrassment comes in many forms and building upon my opening Manilow confession, this article is about my embarrassing musical past. A past featuring bands whose CDs are more likely to appear covered in dust in my wardrobe rather than proudly displayed in my comprehensive filing system. Yes, I do prefer CDs to vinyl and actually that isn’t something I’m remotely embarrassed about.

The first tape I ever bought was Now 29, way back in 1994 when buying a tape in itself was something to be a little embarrassed about. Even when I was 10 years old, listening to the likes of Big Mountain and Crash Test Dummies on this tape, I felt some slight waves of embarrassment. At the time I was trying to convince my friends that I was totally into heavy metal and would wear my older Brother’s Iron Maiden T-shirts whenever he wasn’t home. This tape was an admission that I wasn’t metal through and through, so I would hide it away, well behind the piles of tapes I had made from his CDs of Live After Death, Beneath The Remains and Reign In Blood.

For my 11th birthday I received a CD player, with built-in tape deck and microphone, and soon after started making my own radio shows. I loved compiling the playlists, introducing the songs and designing the sleeve art using the sophisticated tools of blue, black and red biros. I wasn’t embarrassed about making these shows at all, I absolutely loved it. I then realised that with this killer setup, I could start making my own demo tapes. Who knew, maybe Faith No More would fire Mike Patton and be in search of an 11 year old, overweight, English kid with a bowl cut? So with the CDs of Rage Against the Machine, Metallica and Suicidal Tendencies as my backing band, I started making my own frontman audition tapes. Once again, I loved this and didn’t find it embarrassing at all. That was until one day, during a particularly rousing rendition of, “Seek and Destroy”, I looked out of my window to see some kids from school looking at me and laughing. I had left my bedroom window open and they had heard the whole song, including some rather colorful Hetfield-esque ad-libs.

When I was around 14 I entered my hip hop phase. The move was gradual, I’d been listening to Cypress Hill and The Beastie Boys for a number of years but when I started skateboarding, most of the older guys in the group were into hip hop so my transition accelerated big time. Also my appearance began to extend beyond 90s metal-head crossed with street punk, towards something a little more, “gangsta”. Despite the fact I weighed around 140 lbs, my wardrobe choices were often in the region of 40” waist Fubu Jeans and paired with a XXXL Wu Wear hoodie. Things became really serious when I started asking my girlfriend to cornrow my hair and an imitation Death Row Records pendant was purchased.

I can pin-point the moment where I took my hip hop image too far, when it became embarrassing. It was 1999 and I was on vacation with my family, touring around LA, The Grand Canyon and Vegas. The first night of vacation we stayed at the Queen Mary in Long beach and the next day we drove into the city to get breakfast. En route we stopped at a set of traffic lights and on the corner, a group of Long Beach homeboys were chilling. They were wearing the same clothes as me, Pele-Pele, Mecca, Fubu and were clearly just like me, so I decided to roll down the window and throw up a double handed ‘west-side’ hand gesture. I think I may have even shouted “West-side” in an Ice Cube style. Their laughter was the catalyst to reign in my overzealous image. That said, I didn’t fully learn from this embarrassing incident as a year later, when vacationing in New York, I subjected my parents to a rather ill-fated excursion to Harlem in order to purchase some “dope threads”.

I could go on indefinitely about my embarrassing musical past. I remember when I was 13, I painted my nails black and red after watching a Marilyn Manson interview on Headbanger’s Ball, only to realise my mom had no nail varnish remover for me to take it off before school the next day. There was the time at 15 that I played a show with the covers band I sang in at the time and, presumably after watching too many Chili Peppers videos, I decided to take my shirt off onstage. The most embarrassing part of that particular endeavour was when someone in the crowd shouted, “put it back on.” I’ve willingly attended more ska shows than can ever be considered cool. I have more than one Misfits CD featuring Jerry Only as the singer. I love the Pet Shop Boys. The list goes on.

As I write this, aged 32, these things aren’t embarrassing to me anymore. Embarrassment dilutes over time and age gives us perspective on what actually matters. I’ve also noticed that, although I am by no means old and usually consider my brain to be probably around age 19, I care less and less about what people think of me. I didn’t make any of the aforementioned choices because I thought they were the wrong thing to do, I made them because they meant something to me at the time. They were choices based on desire, what I really wanted to do there and then and I think there is something refreshingly honest, and well, punk as fuck, about that.

In 2016 we are now more aware than ever of what people think of us and have the ability to share ourselves with our global neighbourhood quicker and easier than at any time in history. We also live in a time of heightened uncertainty and global apprehension, where the future often looks menacing and ominous. The past on the other hand, even the embarrassing parts of it, just keep on getting brighter all the time.

I stole and butchered that last line from my favourite comic book and I’m not embarrassed about that at all.

James Wells loves music, is an aspiring writer and contributes to The Hard Times. Follow him on Instagram and ask about his cool middle name.