Later With Jools Holland, the long-running, much-loved and frequently exasperating TV series in which Squeeze keyboardist Jools Holland hosts often excellent live acts in the studio, yet interviews them without appearing to bother with irksome details like research or preparation, may finally have some competition.
New show Song Cake threatens to take musicians more seriously, using a mixing desk to break down their songs in order to figure out exactly how they were put together and questioning the musicians in detail about the process.
First up for the Song Cake treatment is Wolfgang Van Halen, whose Mammoth project released their third album, The End, on Friday. In the first clip to emerge from the show, Van Halen and host Jason Berry – frontman with British alt.rockers A – toy happily with the faders as the album's title track plays, dropping instruments in and out of the mix.
"This is cool!" says Van Halen. "I've never really done this with my music before."
A second clip shows Van Halen demonstrating two different ways to finger-tap on the guitar like his father, Eddie Van Halen, before revealing how the different parts of The End came together.
"Some of the biggest names in music push up the faders on the song cake mixing desk while we chat about the sounds, stories and the magic behind the music," say the team behind Song Cake. "You’ve never seen or heard it done like this before, it’s huge!"
Other people involved in the show include executive producer Matt Willis, bassist and singer with pop-punk band Busted, and show writer and host Philip Wilding, a regular contributor to Classic Rock and Prog magazines.
"With AI coming for our art, Song Cake aims to show the world the human side of creating music," says Wilding. "Real people, real struggles, the highs and lows, heartbreaks and triumphs. Let’s educate future music lovers by telling them the stories behind the music so they can cherish, support and respect the artists that make the soundtracks to our lives."
Song Cake is filmed in Olympic Park in East London in front of an audience of 200 people, and tickets for future shoots will be available via the show's website. The organisers have also filmed an episode with American prog rockers Coheed and Cambria.
And, with any luck, there's no boogie-woogie piano anywhere to be found.
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