LCD Soundsystem Founder James Murphy Developing Espresso Blend

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem speaks at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

Former LCD Soundsystem mastermind is following fellow indie icons Bonnie "Prince" Billy and David Lynch into the coffee market.

"I make a lot of coffee," Murphy told New York Magazine's Grub Street blog in an interview after the premiere of Shut Up and Play the Hits, the documentary about LCD Soundsystem's final concert at Madison Square Garden. "For my birthday, my girlfriend got me a training course with the world champion. That's what I'm going to do when I get back to London."

Murphy is working on his own espresso blend, which he plans to distribute at a single shop in Manhattan. He plans to "just go to a roaster who lives near me and start tweaking beans and temperatures" in order to engineer the ideal cup of coffee. "I thought it would be fun. I have beans that I like. I like this sometimes and that sometimes. Sometimes in the middle."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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