Bad smells are now permeating through the nation's venues. Photograph: Getty
Last Friday's Film&Music carried a First Sight column on a new artist called Ebony Bones, whose first release is a post-modern pop mash-up with the peculiar title Don't Fart On My Heart. Limited to 500 copies, the singer probably won't reach Duffy-like ubiquity just yet, but it's a great first offering that has also unwittingly identified a burning issue: the bad smell that is currently hanging around our pop.
Thankfully, since the smoking ban came in last July we no longer have to watch bands play surrounded by acrid fumes, or go home in clothes that stink for days. However, now that the pong of cigarette smoke isn't there to conceal them, gigs are being stunk out by other human smells: bodily odours, sweaty socks and - most alarmingly - farts. Which are now permeating through the nation's venues, as loud and untamed as any rock band on the stage.
I had a whiff of this issue the other week when I was watching Morrissey perform in Doncaster Arena and a big rockabilly quiffed type in front of me let out what can only be described as a rasper - in the middle of Stop Me if You've Heard This One Before. I have heard - and smelt - this one before. Just before Christmas at the Shed Seven gig in Newcastle a young man walked the length of the bar, emitting a parp with every step.
One thing I've noticed is the worse the band, the worse the trump. The smelliest gig I've attended recently was the show at Sheffield Arena by the now singerless UB40, when the pong over the audience almost matched the stale whiff coming from the stage. I realised that this is because UB40 fans have similar taste in food as they do in music. Hundreds of them kept trundling back from the bar, hot dog in one hand and two-pint glasses of lager in the other, before sitting down to summon up the title of a Spinal Tap album and Break Like the Wind.
The problem must be tackled at source - the human bottom. Expert opinion suggests that flatulence is indeed common among people who drink carbonated beverages. Thus, if we are to remain fart free, fizzy drinks must be immediately confiscated from anyone letting rip at gigs. Just as we once were about narcotics and Aids, audiences should be given information in the form of leaflets on which sort of foods and drink make one particularly prone to pooting. As a vegetarian, I have - shall we say - personal experience of the fact that a high vegetable diet also makes one liable to parping, as does turmeric and other spices popular in curries. Contrarily, a life packed with tofu and miso soup is one without, as the judge once said of Lady Archer, fragrant.
Really bad or persistent farters should be identified by a large pink X daubed on their behinds, so people can avoid standing behind them, while merchandising stalls should supply pegs for innocent fans' noses. Brian Eno once had an interesting idea of flooding public spaces with perfume, and perhaps there's some mileage in pumping neroli or some other pleasant fragrance from the stage. However, perhaps Morrissey had the trump card all along when he used to perform surrounded by gladioli. He may have looked bloody ridiculous and caused Panic among local florists, but I'd wager a bundle of Smiths 12 inchers that Mozzer never smelt a fart.
Has anyone else experienced this issue at a gig recently, or is anyone willing to stand up - at a safe distance - and confess to this heinous crime?
