RIP, Richard Cook: den tidning han tänkte sig, är kanske en annorlunda tidning än den The Wire som finns idag, men ambitionen, som han formulerade den i sitt första nummer som chefredaktör, klingar fortfarande som ett lovvärt stridsrop: The Wire will speak out against the crusty battlements of hidebound jazz strongholds. It will not shrink from exposing the meanness of spirit that has left all of us fatigued. It will stand for joy, intellect, enthusiasm and wisdom. It will attempt to banish ignorance and failure. Mark Sinkers minnesord tjänar som en påminnelse om hur bra musikkritik kan se ut:

...the vigour of the dismissal was grounded in and amplified by the sheer extent of his fairness, how well and how generously he cared to listen to mainstream figures that pop consensus mocked or bypassed or misheard or nervously rejected, and to fluff and to trivia and to silly daft dazzle, and to different-drummer cranks or hermits and truculent self-caged misanthropes. To, you know, everything. He was absolutely clear about what he felt; he was absolutely not dogmatic about taste. What mattered wasn't who you wrote about, but how: his ear for a sound, and a dialogue of sounds, was also his ear for a well-formed sentence, and the conversation it could become part of. He always heard music in its social dimensions, and writing too: for Richard it wasn't who you chose to encounter, so much as how you allowed that encounter to unfold, at the time and after. This was the mark of a peerless editor, and I think of a great jazz mind.