All the Rave

Chapter One

1

The Rebels

The rave in Oakland captured Napster as it was just coming into its own at the center of the Web boom's insanity and on the way to becoming the fastest-growing use of the Internet. The sometimes painful story of the quiet young man at the heart of the company began at another, far different party twenty years earlier, on the other side of the country. It was in a ramshackle old house in the hard-luck town of Rockland, Massachusetts, south of Boston. The sprawling home was barely big enough to contain the eight brothers and sisters of the Fanning brood, a diverse and struggling Irish family that this night invited half the neighborhood over to celebrate Eddie Fanning's high school graduation. The Fannings loved music and a raucous good time, and they had arranged for a band of local renown to play. MacBeth performed songs by better-known Boston rockers Aerosmith and sang its own material, even recording a 45 single. Coleen Fanning, sixteen, was especially impressed with the band and with eighteen-year-old Attleboro guitarist Joe Rando in particular. Hundreds of friends and neighbors showed up to enjoy the night. The next oldest after Coleen in the family, fou ... read full excerpt from All the Rave ebook