wurzels – devizine.com

Using Fulltone as a Proper Noun

To most, “full” and “tone” are two separate words, but around here it’s been a portmanteau and a proper noun since 2019, conveying a unique musical experience where orchestral meets pop, thanks to The Fulltone Orchestra….

Yeah, they may play elaborate concerts around the South West from Exeter Cathedral and Bath Abbey to London’s Cadogan Hall and Birmingham Symphony Hall, but it is here, in Devizes where they proper job zip up their boots and return to their roots for a festival like no other.

To put it in dictionary form, it might look something like this AI invention:

Fulltone / ˈfʊlˌtoʊn /proper noun

1- The Fulltone Orchestra: A large, independent British symphony orchestra based in the South West of England. Founded in 2017 by musical director Anthony Brown, the ensemble consists of roughly 50 to 65 musicians and is celebrated for performing diverse, cross-genre arrangements—ranging from classical masterpieces and movie scores to rock, Motown, and electronic dance music.

2- The Fulltone Music Festival: A prominent annual multi-day outdoor music festival organized by the orchestra in Devizes, Wiltshire. The event showcases the orchestra alongside headline artists and guest vocalists performing large-scale symphonic concerts across a single weekend.

Origin: Formed in Devizes, Wiltshire, as a compound of full (complete, maximum) and tone (a sound of distinct pitch and quality), reflecting the expansive and powerful sound of a complete live orchestra.

Example usage: “We are buying weekend camping passes to Fulltone at Park Farm this summer.”

Editor’s additional note: “for the love of Jason Donovan, make sure you do!”

If you know me and my grammar, you’ll have come to the correct assumption I’m not one for dictionaries anyway! I’m no scholar in the classics either. I just know what I like, and through all the bobsy-die and Tempest in a teapot online skullduggery, the bottom line is, I promise you from past experience: when you get into that dome-shaped stage, almost iconic now in Devizes, and allow the sublime acoustics of a full orchestra to flow through you, it is magnificent.

And you’re not going to find anything like it hanging around Sidmouth Street waiting for your chicken sandwich to be cooked, or staying in watching a show hosted by Ant and Dec.

Fulltone Festival 2023 – Day One Image: Gail Foster

“We’re bringing Jason Donovan to a field in Potterne,” organiser Jemma Brown told me. “Why would you not get behind that and see what two local people are trying to achieve?!”

Jason, Wurzels. Rozella, and all other gubbing or not, are only added bonuses. I was of the generation to reject pop crime manufacturers Stock Aitken Waterman, being honest, and Jason was used as a pawn, a male equivalent of Kylie, and I can’t give you the key to my combined harvester, because I haven’t got one, have I? But hey ho, a shuttle bus pulls in at the Pelican, even I have to admit, Jason Donovan coming to Devizes IS a BIG deal.

The Wurzels may be too far east for their liking, and quipped about Devizes in a song, but aren’t they the only band who made a greater success with a parody song than the original?! And I wouldn’t mind if I do; time is healer, and there’s too many broken hearts in the world, anyway. Jason was right, dammit!!

Don’t be that subject; communal love to be found at FullTone, but only if you’re there, looking gorgeous! I’m not out to repeat myself, we’ve done a preview for this extravaganza already. I can lead a horse to water, but I’m not prophesying that I can make it drink. But I think you’d be seriously missing out if you don’t buy a ticket, and one for your other half, maybe one for Auntie Doris too, to this one, at a new venue, with new horizons. Put her in the deckchair, let her rave.

The biggest mistake you could make is that Fulltone is a massive commercial enterprise, and that you’re going to be ripped off by a professional consortium, stuffing your dollar in their ears and laughing at you. “The reality of it is,” Jemma explained, “we are a husband and wife team running an independent orchestra and event, with no financial backing other than ticket sales – which is a massive risk for anyone to take.”

Slap me down and call me Madge Bishop if it ain’t true. Jemma’s been all over that book of face again, interrupting your constant stream of political propaganda, overkilling the advertising. S’ only cos she gets jittery, worrying no one is going to show their face. Everyone who organises any event gets this. Please believe me, it’s perfectly natural.

Don’t we all get a bit Nelson Muntz, and on our high horses when we mount that poisonous social media platform?! Just a tad?! I’m a bloody nightmare, right?! Just ignore me, I do.

Fulltone Festival 2023 Day Two Image: Gail Foster

Bottom line; it’s not about any singular person, not even Jason, or The Wurzels, risking their safety crossing the county border. It’s about the show, and how it MUST go on. It’s about showcasing all those talented artists, all those musicians, singers, all of them, invited to bravely take to the stage.

We could walk up the canal, remembering the Boto-X, and its sad demise. Wander into town; first met the wife at that pub, now derelict. And who remembers the arcade where you hid away school lunch hours? Shame it’s gone, like the pie shop, Woolworths, Street Festival, the comfy sofa at The Four Seasons. Yeah, Fulltone has become a proper noun here, but let’s not allow it to be only used in past tense…..

Get a ticket here, enjoy yourself, and know we’ll be back together, together, because I really want to show you my heart is oh so true, and that all the love I have is, especially for you…..and everyone else going to Fulltone!

The Wurzels To Play At FullTone 2026!

If Devizes’ celebrated FullTone Festival is to relocate to Whistley Road’s Park Farm for next summer’s extravaganza, what better way to give it the rustic feel than The Wurzels, who have just been announced on the line-up?!

If Somerset’s Scrumpy and Western genre has fermented longer than a cider press from folk roots, it’s surely The Wurzels who brought mass attention to it with their number one parody of Melanie’s Brand New Key, The Combine Harvester. The staggering thing about this is, it was in 1976, but what’s more staggering, is people are still singing it today, and likely will be at FullTone Festival on 11th & 12th July 2026!

Organiser of FullTone, Jemma Brown said of the booking, “there’s not much more we can say to that!” But you know me, I’ve always got something to say, and I’m saying that is a fantastic surprise which only remains to add to the already brilliant show the orchestra and guest acts will deliver.

What else we do know at this early stage, is the huge fifty-piece orchestra will play through sets of Holst’s The Planets & Star Wars, a Symphonic Queen with Ricardo Afonso, The Best of Motown, an eighties spectacular and Devizes-own BBC radio DJ James Threlfall will be on the dance anthems.

If I wonder what songs the Wurzels will play, top choice has to be I’ll Never Get a Scrumpy Here, which contains the line, “’Cos you never get surprises livin’ in Devizes,” and spurred my rant column of the same name, you might remember it. I did write to them to ask permission, they were too busy drinking cider to be in any way concerned. I asked if it was sly stab at our brewery, or that Devizes was as far eastward they favour to venture, but they explained it was used because it rhymed! Well, they’re venturing here in July, and if they give us the key, we can all have a brand new combine harvester.

Idiot Music, is the Monkey’s Bizzle

This is isn’t the favoured way to start a review, but this is idiot music for stupid people, if you think this is stupid then you’re a fucking idiot, and that’s a quote, from the opening title tack, which ends on, “oh, there it is, up my bum; can I eat it now?”

If Goldie Looking Chain is all too millennial, but hip hop, for you, should be served with massive chunks of deadpan sauce, west country tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and general silliness, Monkey Bizzle’s debut album, Idiot Music might just be the thing to pick off the menu.

Through the Pythonesque nature of Idiot Music though, wailing guitars, proficient drumming (from Cerys of the Boot Hill All Stars), and substantial dope beats means this is far from amateurish, and will rock the festival circuit. In fact, the Somerset five-piece sold out the album launch party at The Barge on Honeystreet a fortnight ago; I see why. This drips with Scrumpy & Western charm, like Gloucestershire’s Corky, Wurzels meets the Streets, the elements of “agricultural” hip hop make this apt for our local crusty scene. Yet with wider appeal, it is, simply, parental advisory fun.

Primates tend to be a running theme, a particularly danceable funky signature tune named Monkey Funk, a King Kong themed rap, another including David Attenborough samples. There are also drug references aplenty, the reggae-inspired Heavy, or Doves (Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) needs no explaining, but in it, it mocks the chav culture in such a way you may’ve thought only Goldie Looking Chain could. Something it’ll inevitably be compared to, but more so than the humour drafting this side of the Seven, what makes this so appealing is its nod of respect to hip hop rather than mocking it, is greater than that of Goldie Looking Chain, in a similar way there’s was with Beastie Boy satirists Morris Minor and the Majors, if you get as old skool as I!

One thing’s for sure, Monkey Bizzle isn’t to be taken seriously, but for the most part it’s listenable to as a hip hop album rather than pure novelty too, unique rappers Skoob and James make this so, especially as the album trickles on, both CU Next Tuesday and Ha Ha Ha being particularly entertaining, Oi Mate ripples with The Streets’, Give Me My Lighter Back but under a ska riff.

Nothing here is going to become next summer’s banging anthem on Radio One’s Big Weekender, an honour they’re clearly not bothered by or striding towards. To face facts, what you get is a full album of highly entertaining flip-flop and amusing lyrics of daring themes, wrapped by gifted musicians only playing the fools. And for which, Idiot Music has got my name all over it!