I Feel Voxish

(1)

A pillbox crisp (2)

Offer, offer, it was not an unreasonable offer

A pillbox crisp, that French git 
The spikes he left in the bathroom (3)
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 (4)

I feel voxish, stack-heeled Hari Krish (5)
Those disgusting vegan new punks (6)
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 (7)
And voxish

1. "Vox" is Latin for "voice," so the title means something like "I feel like singing." There is also a line of amplifiers called "Vox." 

From an interview for the 1987 book Tape Delay:

"I also like experiments where it's just a sound experiment. In a way I find that I did that with something like 'I Feel Voxish', I just wanted a vocal tune going - but the lyrics in that are dead interesting actually." 

The song is built around a bass riff by Steve Hanley, and Karl Burns adds a second bass. From Hanley's The Big Midweek (via Dan):

"Being in Melbourne for a ten-day stretch lends itself to a spot of songwriting. During a rainy soundcheck, ‘I Feel Voxish’ comes about. It starts as a bass riff which everyone adds to and then Mark starts singing about sharpening knives on garden bricks in the bathroom. Psycho. So that’s what all the noise was about last night! We kept turning up the Superman cartoons that are on twenty-four hours a day but there was no drowning it out."

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2. It's not certain whether this line is correct, or whether MES says "I feel vox crisp" each time. In any case, we spent quite a bit of time fretting over this rendering, and the below is what we came up with (for "I feel vox crisp," see note 7 below):

A famously obscure little phrase; a "crisp," in England, is what is called a "(potato) chip" in the United States, whereas "chips" are French fries over there. Maybe a potato chip shaped like a pillbox, or else a nonsense phrase (see note 7). From T.L.B.:  "I think he's talking about Pringles type small round crisps that are packaged in cylindical tubes, like a longer, narrower version of a pill box used for storing a hat. This style of crisp hadn't made it to Britain by 1983, so MES wouldn't have had a frame of reference for them if he'd come across some on tour in America or Europe and might conceivably have described them as 'pillbox crisps.' Maybe it's used in the lyric as a signifier of something inferior, a shoddy version of British crisps like Smiths Crisps, which M.E.S. would doubtless have preferred!"

Even if T.L.B. is wrong about the details, it may be the case that the connotations of the term "pillbox crisp" are private in this way. 

And PatrickH remarks that "the first thing that came to mind re pillbox crisp for me was the disc of foam that you get in the top of a pill bottle, it's thin and round, like a crisp, and might be the kind of rubbish that would be left behind by a drug user."

As Mike Groughsovt points out below, the general idea seems to be that the Frenchman whom we will soon meet is a jerk for leaving syringes in the bathroom and taking off (see note 3 below). His definition of "pillbox crisp" is "An effete French pill popping dandy now branching out into needle drugs." He goes on: "I'm proposing Crisp with a capital C, as in Quentin. That's the dandy. You know how you hear this done with historical names, someone is a corner-store Shakespeare, or, I dunno, a Robespierre on the Dancefloor... so 'pillbox Crisp' makes the French git and effete pill-popper..." And browneyespurplesockets suggests Nico's son Ari: Nico lived in Manchester at the time, and members of the Blue Orchids--formerly of the Fall--were her backing band. Her son apparently became hooked on heroin after a time of merely popping pills, exactly as Mike Groughsovt defines it above. 

See note 1 above, though--the fact that the song was apparently written in Melbourne may suggest further options. Dan submits the following from an interview with the New Zealand zine Rip It Up, dated September, 1982: "The Fall of Slick, Mark E. Smith’s Enduction Hour" by George Kay:

"Did You Like Australia?

We stayed in Kings Cross, what a fuckin' nightmare, I was bloody horrified. I'm no moralist but in the street I was accosted by prostitutes, drunks, people tryin' to borrow money, everything's open 24 hours and there's junkies everywhere. It's all cheap stimulation."

Kings Cross is an area of Sydney, where The Fall played several dates in July 1982 (i.e., prior to Melbourne). Also to note that in the same interview, MES describes Bessy as an "old French friend of mine."

Dan points out below that there is no reference to the title in the lyrics, which is true, but "pillbox crisp," if it does appear in the lyrics, is certainly a pun on "feel voxish."

"Pillboxes" in the sense of concrete guard houses are mentioned in "H.O.W."  

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3. The reference here is almost certainly to hypodermic needles. John points out that the "French git" may be Claude Bessy, a journalist who was associated with MES and apparently liked his spikes...on the other hand, T.L.B. says "I'm not sure Claude Bessy would have been the French git, MES was supposed to be good friends with him and I don't think he would have described him like that as he wasn't a Fall band member or manager so there's no obvious reason for them to have fallen out. Also, it is unlikely that next line 'never hear from him again' would apply to Bessy either because he worked with The Fall on the Peverted By Language Bis' video which I'm guessing was mostly filmed after I Feel Voxish was written." And see note 2 above, where it is suggested that Nico's son Ari is the "git."

Dan points out that "git" is relatively mild and may be banter. So, there is much we do not know.

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4. Smith pronounces "victuals" the way it's spelled, eschewing the the correct pronunciation "vittles." The line is from H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Picture in the House" (thanks to John in the comments below), in which a traveling scholar seeks shelter in an old New England house. The denizen is an old man who has a book filled with pictures of supposed African scenes, and his favorite is one which shows the "butcher shop" of a band of cannibals. The old man waxes passionate about the picture: "Killin' sheep was kinder more fun [after viewing the picture]--but d'ye know, twan't quite satisfyin'. Queer haow a cravin' gits aholt on ye--As ye love the Almighty, young man, don't tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd that picter begun to make me hungry for victuals I couldn't raise nor buy..." [emphasis in original]  

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5. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is commonly known as the "Hare Krishnas" after the movement's mantra "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare." According to the movement's founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Har? means "the energy of God" while Krishna and Rama refer to God himself, meaning "He who is All-Attractive" and "He who is the Source of All Pleasure". The Krishnas are known for, among other things, their vegetarianism.  

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6. Smith pronounces "vegan" as "vegg-an," whereas the proper pronunciation is "vee-gan." This may be an honest mistake, as the word was not at all common in 1982; on the other hand, Smith often seems to enjoy mispronouncing words, and a mispronunciation is sometimes employed to convey contempt.

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7. This may be a clue to "pillbox crisp," as both phrases pun on "feel voxish." "Vox crispa" seems to be a musical term, but one that is only used in Italian language contexts, as far as I can discover via the internet. One could probably take a guess at the meaning and come up with some vague notion that, if left unexamined, makes one feel like one is reasonably close...at least, that's what I did. Google it and see...

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I Feel Voxish: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1982