Coffee & Music : Cycles

ONE

A few centuries ago, you had no coffee in bed in the morning – and I seriously wonder how were people doing without it!

A long time ago some guys in Africa realized it was cool to get these little red seeds, then burn them a little before making this cool black beverage. Coffeeeee…

It came to Italy, then France, then England, you know the rest…

I heard about the three waves of coffee :

1. Black coffee : cheap, sold and consumed everywhere.
2. Starbucks culture, making coffee a candy mess with caramel, chocolate, cream…
3. A need to come back to simple black coffee with a knowledge of origins, ethics, taste subtleties : specialty coffee.

TWO

Before the invention of recording, the music you had is the music you or people played.

It’s been a climbing :

• Came vinyl, then LPs. From mono came stereo, waow!
• Hi-Fi has been the word, for a few decades : the goal was to get a better sound.
• Compact Disc came : better dynamics, no clicks and pop, no pre-echo…

Then a fall :

• MP3 and other “compressed” sound, a music disaster.
• Then “the return of the vinyl”, which is like this :

What I expect today, like for coffee, is a… public sudden understanding that the quality of recorded music IS important. The tools already exist, with Blu-ray audios, or portable players which can play FLAC and other uncompressed music.

• Hi-Fi meant “High Fidelity” – What about the sound quality, now?
• The Return of the Vinyl

THREE

So the structure is easy, it’s a three parts process :

1. Discovery, then mass market (a cup of black coffee homemade / a good CD)
2. Decadence, quality collapse (Starbucks horror / vinyl, mp3 or YouTube)
3. Rebirth with high-end products for everybody (a cup of good black coffee / high definition music)

Where to apply this triplebranch? Politics? Economy? Fashion? Literatures?

Thanks for reading!