Every Rock nerd in Cleveland (let’s make that northeast Ohio) knows who Jane Scott was. Jane was the Rock Music critic for The Plain Dealer. She was at the first shows in Cleveland by The Beatles and The Stones and I swear she was at every show that ever mattered here in Cleveland, or at the major US festivals. I saw her all the time, and she was always fun to talk to at a show. The trick was to catch her between acts or right before showtime, when she wasn’t talking to the bands and the music hadn’t started. She wore white go go boots a lot of times, and she was the oldest person in the room by the time my concert attending part of life came along. She was 92.
She wrote in a very enthusiastic style, and she tried to find out why people liked every band. She was no Rock Snob, and I really don’t remember her ever writing a really negative review. She used really funny words, like “kicky” and she would never be confused with some Rock Critic that thinks they are enlightening us to some heretofore unknown truth. Jane was writing about having fun, and her weekly column, The Happening, outlived almost every underground weekly entertainment magazine by decades. The Cleveland music scene was made better by Jane’s 50 or so years of going to concerts, and performers big and small, as well as fans, are all going to miss her.
The world needs more people who write about music using words like “kicky” — and far, far fewer “rock critics.”
Never heard of her, but she sounds like a cool lady.