What is #ripcatfish

I was once in a very small English class in backwoods Montana with an eccentric teacher who also ran the drama program and would often go on rants about Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. Needless to say, the majority of what came out of his mouth was passionate and also bordered on conspiracy theories. But the one thing he said to us that made the most impact? Pop culture is disappearing. Not just for a moment, not just bit by bit. It is going extinct. Do I agree? That’s a loaded question, but the short answer is absolutely not.

First and foremost, pop culture isn’t something that just goes away. Do you honestly think everyone in Europe wasn’t talking about the coronation of Queen Elizabeth after Henry the eight’s death? What exactly do you think that is? Thats Tudor age pop culture. Everyone was talking about it. And though the world is a far smaller place, there is also far more content circulating through the masses. So the issue is not “does pop culture exist.” The issue is “where the hell do I find the people who care about what I care about?”

I started as your average consumer. For years I’d been listening to some band I didn’t know the name of. And in all honesty, I didn’t care to really check who it was either. And then in January of 2022, I became what you might call “a diehard fan” of Welsh indie rock band Catfish and the Bottlemen.

I became obsessed first with the frontman Van McCann who has the charisma of Obama if he were to play guitar and act like he was on cocaine. And then slowly, I branched out to the lead guitarist Johnny Bond, who most people just refer to as “Bondy.” I started listening to their music religiously and came to know every song by ear alone. I can tell you what album each one is on and in what order. I shared it all with my friends and suddenly I was being avoided for fear of another half hour long rant about live performances versus recorded material.

But this is less important than the information came to be known on June 6th. An event I now all “black summer.”

On June 6th, 2022, the lead guitarist of Catfish and the Bottlemen, Johnny Bond, posted on Twitter that he had not been part of the band since March of 2021. Let me repeat that in a way many of you might understand a bit better. Johnny Bond, the lead guitarist of Catfish and the Bottlemen, announced over a year after leaving the band, that he had left the band. Of course, this didn’t exactly go over well with the bands fairly large fanbase, a swarm of young people my age who had been avidly anticipating a show in Cardiff England that Catfish had pulled out of only three days prior.

Questions arose immediately, all thankfully answered by Bondy’s post on Twitter. The band had played last summer at Reeding and Leeds, with Bondy as the lead guitarist. According to the post, he was not in the band at the time. So why was he there? The answer: he was a stand in, as there was no one else to play at the time. Thats one question answered out of nearly two hundred. But as of June 18th, 2022, there has been no official announcement from the label or the band itself. All we have is Johnny Bond and his rather tragic twitter post. And according to the last known manager of the band, he hasn’t managed them since 2019.

So what happened? Bands fall out all the time. The Beatles still make shock waves with their breakup every year and the name Yoko Ono isn’t exactly a mystery to most of the English speaking world. But the way this one seems to be happening? I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and that is likely due to their apparent lack of representation for the last two years. Its like watching a high school clique disintegrate entirely. Allegations backing one member or the other have been rapidly growing across all social media platforms. People are eager to place blame, which lets face it, is just human nature at its core. But the bottom line? When you’re in the public eye without a manager, shit is going to hit the fan. And Catfish is living proof of that.

So with the band’s existence on the chopping block, most fans have come to the conclusion that its already over despite any official statement. As much as I wish I could debunk this theory, it seems highly likely by all accounts. And so, my status for the last week has been #ripcatfish in honor of the band that brought me closer to people in ways that I would have never thought possible. Hell, my best friend lives in Paris now, which is about as far from Montana as you can get. And that’s my point here. We can mourn what was, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t for nothing. I don’t care whose fault it was that the band broke up and I definitely couldn’t give a single shit why. Their music changed my life, and for that, I am grateful it exists and that they went out and made music for nearly fourteen years as a band.

At the end of the day, it's the experiences you get. Not the longevity. So grieve with me, but for fucks sake, don’t tell me it was all for nothing.