Like Cream, Chicago and the Rolling Stones, Michael Hochanadel has his greatest hits.

Today, The Gazette Newspapers’ longtime music critic is belting them out in a speedy and spirited question-and-answer session.

Hochanadel, 61, who grew up in Guilderland and graduated from Bishop Gibbons High School, enlisted in the U.S. Navy during the mid-1960s. He was trained as a linguist and was stationed in Monterey, Calif., where an already strong interest in music intensified.

Hochanadel lives in Schenectady and works full time as senior marketing counsel at Sawchuk Brown Associates in Albany. His “Jukebox” music column appears Fridays in The Daily Gazette.

Q: How did you get started in the review profession?

A: A friend gave me a ticket to Jethro Tull at the Palace in 1972 or 1973 and I wrote a review for fun because I liked reading reviews and wanted to see if I could do it.

I was working in the Gazette wire room then. So I brought the review in and handed it to city editor Buddy Ottaviano, then waited nervously to see if it would run. When it didn’t, I fished it out of his waste basket the next day and took it to Kite, then edited by Don Wilcock in the offices upstairs from Stereo Sound on Jay Street.

He ran it and asked, “What else are you going to see?” Over the next few weeks, I saw the Faces with Rod Stewart at the Montreal Forum and Pink Floyd at Carnegie Hall and reviewed these for him. A year or so later, Jack Hume asked me to write for The Gazette. So for a brief time, I wrote two reviews of each show. I don’t recommend it.

Q: What do you listen or look for during a show?

A: The basics: I report who did what, where, when, why and how well. I write down song titles, tempos — do things build throughout the set or are there waves of energy, pacing and excitement — and the order and quality of solos and the groove, and how the audience responds to things. I always wear earplugs now.

Q: What do you value most in shows?

A: Skill, soulfulness and surprise. I love it when things go wrong and performers have to restart a song or make up lyrics or switch instruments unexpectedly. Too many concerts these days are canned, stiff and over-rehearsed — though real masters of the craft can make a completely structured show, including stage patter, seem spontaneous. I once saw the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band play two shows back to back for two different audiences. Not only was every song the same, played in the same order and exactly the same way; but every word they spoke between songs was identical from one show to the next. It was like watching a Xerox machine — but a good one, because they made it feel natural. I have sometimes thought that recorded vocals were augmenting certain shows I saw — the Beach Boys, notably — but couldn’t prove it.

Q: Where are — or were — your favorite places to see shows and listen to music?

A: The Lenox Music Inn was my favorite outdoor place and J.B. Scott’s was my favorite indoor place. I saw Bob Marley and the Wailers, The Band (the originals), the last-ever Youngbloods show, the original Weather Report and Return to Forever (on the same show) play great shows at Lenox. J.B. Scott’s had just the coolest bands, night after night after night: U2, the Pretenders, NRBQ, Joe Ely, Captain Beefheart, Asleep at the Wheel and too many others to count, plus the best Albany bands of that time.

Q: The obvious question — what are your most memorable shows?

A: You can’t give me 30, or 300? Any number of NRBQ shows, from J.B. Scott’s to New York to Northampton. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1972 at the Union College Memorial Chapel on the same night when I also saw the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever at the Palace. The Grateful Dead at the Buffalo War Memorial Auditorium the night before I saw the Rolling Stones at Rich Stadium. The Dead were a lot better than the Stones.

Q: What’s one of the funniest or strangest things you’ve seen during a show?

A: Once at J.B. Scott’s, NRBQ closed their set by singing Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a really jarring thing to do — crooning this interminable plodding folk ballad after a mostly upbeat, fun, high-energy rocking show. Their fans “got it,” but others wanted to kill them. They left to a loud mix of cheering and angry shouts. Then they came back for an encore that some greeted happily but others pounced on as an excuse to scream at them some more. So what did they play? “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” of course. Years later, their manager told me her job included going out into the audience during their shows and booing.

Q: Reviewers must write quickly, usually on deadline. How do you manage?

A: I love intermissions because I can use that time to write about the opening act or the first set. If deadline is 11:15, I have to start writing about the headliner by 10:45. A tight deadline means you have to go with your first judgments and be confident and quick with your language. It’s challenging and exciting, but it sometimes gives me “deadline hangover,” when the excitement takes a while to wear off before I can sleep.