Lyrics
Feel vox crisp! Offer, offer, it was not an unreasonable offer Feel vox crisp, that French get The spikes he left in the bathroom And I never heard from him again Offer, offer, it was not an unreasonable offer But it made me hungry For victuals could not raise nor buy 1 I feel voxish, stack-heeled Hari Krish Those disgusting vegan new punks Caught my life mould, give me silenced lectures Offer, offer, it was not an unreasonable offer But it made me hungry For victuals could not raise nor buy I've been sharpening a knife in the bathroom on a brick I got from the garden No-one will fuck with me again Offer, offer, it was not an unreasonable offer But it made me hungry For victuals could not raise nor buy Feel vox crisp And voxish
Commentary
< Post in progress >
… with something like ‘I Feel Voxish’, I just wanted a vocal tune going – but the lyrics in that are dead interesting actually, like the throwaways and that, it’s the sort of thing I can’t even remember to write down, but it would look good written down.
Mark E. Smith, quoted in Neal (1987, p.98).
Footnotes
- According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, “victual” is a now-rare Middle English (i.e. c.1100-1500 CE) word meaning “Whatever is required or may be used for consumption to maintain life; food, sustenance.” In the plural, it means “Articles of food; supplies, provisions, now esp. as prepared for use.” It was also used in the mid-16th to mid-17th centuries to mean “animals used as food.” It should be pronounced “vittles”, but MES sings it as it is spelled “vic-tu-als”.
Thanks to a tip by user @John at annotatedfall.doomby.com (comment #2, 1 August 2013), we know that the line is from H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Picture in the House” (first published 1921, and reprinted many times since). Lovecraft seems to use it in the “animals used as food” sense: i.e. you can buy animal meat, or you can raise animals to slaughter yourself, but human flesh cannot (legally/ethically) be obtained by either method – you can’t purchase it and you really didn’t ought to rear and butcher people yourself:
“Killin’ sheep was kinder more fun – but d’ye know, ’twan’t quite satisfyin’. Queer haow a cravin’ gits a holt on ye – As ye love the Almighty, young man, don’t tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun ta make me hungry fer victuals I couldn’t raise nor buy – here, set still, what’s ailin? ye? – I didn’t do nothin’, only I wondered haow ’twud be ef I did – They say meat makes blood an’ flesh, an’ gives ye new life, so I wondered if ’twudn’t make a man live longer an’ longer ef ’twas more the same -” ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “I Feel Voxish” [Archived]
- Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
- Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
- Neal, Charles (1987). Tape Delay: Confessions from the Eighties Underground. London: SAF Publishing. (2001 reprint). [Available online in The Internet Archive]
- Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
- Smith, Mark E. (1985). The Fall Lyrik & Texte Von Mark E. Smith. In Deutsch & Englisch. With Drawings by Brix. Berlin: The Lough Press. [AKA The Orange Book. Available online in The Internet Archive]
- Smith, Mark E. (2008). vII. The Lough Press & AMarquisManipulationProductions. [AKA the Blue Lyrics Book]
- Smith Start, Brix (2016). The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise. London: Faber & Faber. [Text available online in archive.org]
- The Track Record: “I Feel Voxish”
- Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).
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