Seattle music critic Rickey Wright passed away yesterday at the age of 45 after suffering a stroke. This is of course incredibly sad. I didn't know Rickey well—I think he wrote one story for this paper while I've been music editor—but I knew him well enough to know that he was a kind person, a great conversationalist (and not just by admittedly socially awkward music crit standards), and a thoughtful, passionate fan and critic. I mostly saw Rickey at Michealangelo Matos' eclectic happy hour DJ sets on Wednesday nights at Havana, which often turned into something like EMP Pop Conference study groups, attracting music critics both professional and otherwise, and which times with Rickey and friends I will remember fondly—so I'll hand things over here to Matos' remembrance of Rickey, posted to his blog yesterday. RIP, Rickey.

I'm blessed to have had a lot of good friends in Seattle, and I'm doubly blessed that Rickey Wright was one of them. Rickey passed away this afternoon at 4:31. Last week he'd had a stroke—apparently more than one, all small, over a period of time—and went to the hospital for treatment. He had surgery and underwent another stroke on the table; he spent most of his final week in a coma. Our friend Rachel and I visited him yesterday. It was not as awful as I'd feared it might be: he still looked like himself, which was encouraging even if everyone knew he wasn't going to make it. It's hard not to second-guess how much of this I should be saying, mainly because Rickey was the kind of person who deserves whatever honor you can give him, especially in passing. I've seldom known a kinder person, or a better listener, or anyone more enthusiastic about music or film or whatever—and even better, his enthusiasm was catching. When I'm excited about something I yell without meaning to, or just become obnoxious about it. Rickey never did that. He didn't have to. He was also an effortless people person; everyone was welcome to him. He didn't have a snobbish bone in his body. We had sort of drifted into not going out for drinks as often as we had been, which is something I regret, though not nearly so much as I do that he's gone, only in his mid-40s, one of the sweetest men I know, a very funny guy, the fucking best.