Re: a life well-lived

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

Sad to hear about Gerald Kearby. Liquid Audio was a great vision and I
had some exciting contact with the company by the late nineties as I
was writing a book on the subject of Internet Music. Gerald's
co-workers Brad and Tammy especially come to mind helping me in a very
nice way. Tammy argued that I should write in English but I decided to
go with Swedish to bring in future guest lecturer gigs at the Swedish
universities. Not a too big market for Swedish books though, so maybe
she was right...

I did not know about the offer they got from Apple. But looking back
today my take is that Apple copied a lot of the original Liquid Audio
ideas, but with a bit more focus on the music consumer and a system
less favorabel for musicians, artists and composers.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.perboysen.com
http://www.youtube.com/perboysen


On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 8:30 AM, Jim W. <synchro1@gmail.com> wrote:
> I continue to lurk here since who knows how long & wish you all the 
> best. My
> life has been strange & insular for 3 years but that ended.
>
> I read this obituary today & thought it was well-written.  I like 
> drummers,
> so I read it twice.
>
> Drummers made me think of Rick Walker. Which reminded me to check my LD
> email basket.
>
> It has no real looping content, but what the heck...
>
> Digital music pioneer Gerald Kearby dies in Peninsula car crash
>
> PESCADERO -- Digital music pioneer Gerald Kearby, who once turned down an
> offer from Steve Jobs to buy his company, died Monday when his truck 
> veered
> off a rural San Mateo County road and into a tree.
>
> The crash on Pescadero Creek road ended a remarkable life and career that
> stretched from teaching award-winning drum line performers to designing
> custom equipment for the Grateful Dead as well as Jefferson Starship and
> finally cofounding online music company Liquid Audio.
>
> The loss of the 65-year-old Pescadero resident has left the music world
> mourning one of its characters and innovators. A memorial website is
> overflowing with photos and remembrances for the man who once responded 
> to a
> salesman's complaint over a broken office window by saying: "Pete, 
> you're a
> sales guy; the only (expletive) window (you) should be looking out is one
> from a plane!"
>
> According to the California Highway Patrol, Kearby lost control of his 
> 2008
> Ford pickup near Roy Gulch Road around 6:40 p.m. Monday. He apparently 
> tried
> to straighten out the truck, after it drifted off the road for reasons 
> that
> remain unclear, but overcompensated. The Ford went through the oncoming
> lane, hit a roadside tree and flipped. Kearby, who was wearing a seat 
> belt,
> was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
>
> Longtime business partner and friend Rob Modeste, 57, said Kearby was on 
> his
> way home from Redwood City and was
>
> a short distance from his house when the crash happened. The men had been
> together earlier in the day for a meeting and then grabbed a beer at 
> Gourmet
> Haus Staudt. They said good bye, not knowing they wouldn't see each other
> alive again.
> Kearby was born in Oklahoma and spent his early years around the West, 
> said
> Modeste. He ended up in the Bay Area and, a drummer himself, was teaching
> drum line performers. By the time he hit his 30s he realized he wanted 
> to do
> something else, about the time the two met in 1979, Modeste said. In the
> 1980s they built custom audio equipment for Bay Area legends the Grateful
> Dead and Jefferson Starship.
>
> In the mid-1980s the men saw the early potential of digital recording,
> jumped into the field and were bought out by a Swiss electronics firm. 
> Then
> in the 1996 came the idea to sell music on the Internet.
>
> Modeste and Kearby had been working on an idea for a website that would
> allow music fans to remix songs they loved. But a conversation with a
> venture capitalist gave them the idea to simply sell songs online. What
> followed was a rapid rise and then fall of their company Liquid Audio. 
> After
> losing control of the company in a nasty tussle with investors, Kearby
> resigned in November 2002.
>
> Before that occurred, Steve Jobs had offered to buy the music startup. 
> The
> price, however, was less than the roughly $100 million the company had in
> the bank, Modeste said. In the end Kearby declined the offer, saying the
> board of directors would never accept to be bought for less cash then 
> they
> had in hand.
>
> In 2005 Modeste and Kearby launched another venture, this one was called
> Neurotone and which specializes in audio therapy aimed at helping people
> with damaged hearing, like the rocker's curse of ringing ears called
> tinnitus.
>
> "We had spent our careers making people deaf," Modeste said. "It was 
> time to
> fix all the damage we had done."
>
> Kearby is a survived by his wife.
>
> Contact Joshua Melvin at 650-348-4335. Follow him at
> Twitter.com/melvinreport.