FAVORITE RIFF. This is a tough one. Rock is a riff-driven music, and there are hundreds of great riffs to choose from. The riff from “Satisfaction” is as urgent and great today as it was forty years ago, and I’m not tired of hearing it. The riff to “Baba O’Reilly” has been used on construction sites when blasting material ran out. And what about “Gloria” or “Wild Thing” or “I Fought the Law” (BOTH versions) or “It’s a Beautiful Day” or the Bo Diddley beat? Well, luckily the category here is “favorite” rather than best, and I’m going to go forward a couple of decades for mine. Guns ‘n Roses was one of my favorite bands, for their incendiary rock and their apocalyptic vision, hopelessly romantic when you think about it, that the doors of excess lead to wisdom. (Actually, they lead to “Behind the Music” specials.) But somewhere in there, Mr. W. Axl Rose and Mr. Slash created a devastatingly corny song with the sweetest guitar riff I’ve ever heard. It’s even in the title: “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” It takes a tough rocker to make a song this sticky, but the riff dah-dah DAH dah, dah DAH dah grabbed me the first time I ever heard it and has never let go. Here’s the proof of its greatness: when you’re on the road and you’re scanning channels and you come across “Sweet Child O’ Mine” halfway through and the riff is over, aren’t you disappointed?

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn isn’t a friendly or warm-fuzzy record, nor is it an insult to anyone’s intelligence. This Pink Floyd disc retains its power to chill and to thrill after forty years, and it gave me uneasy dreams.

It can also be fierce and cogent, as in “Astronomy Domine,” a frank masterpiece of the rock era from the Morse Code-blasts of its opening to its immediately coherent and defiant otherworldliness, to its ending, which Floyd rather ungallantly echoed in Dark Side of the Moon. And it can be experimental and exciting, as in the late-Coltranish-deconstructive improvisations of “Interstellar Overdrive.” And it is a humble record, offering as a vehicle to set your mind free an ordinary bike, one not even owned by Syd Barrett but borrowed.

How many times have I heard Patti Smith play “Because the Night?” Did she play it the time I saw her at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ, porn palace by day, rock hall by night? Did she play it in Central Park in a miserable drizzle the summer of 1980, just before retiring with Sonic Smith to Detroit for 15 years of married life? Did she play it at the Beacon Theater at the show she opened for Bob Dylan, when they sang together? Did she play it at her joyous Central Park return in 1996, the time I heard her sing “When Doves Cry” and “Wild Leaves?” Did she play it at the Hoboken street fair I saw her at, while she was recording next door in Weehawken?

I can’t answer for each show, but I’ve heard her play this song many times, and I bet that most people who have heard it live have it filed away in the memory banks for a happy retrieval in old age when thinking about the wild joy that’s possible in this life, even if only for three minutes at a time.

Savor the delicious irony that this signature song by guitar hero Jeff Beck was written by rival Jimmy Page.

Revel in the uncredited “supergroup” that recorded it: Beck, Nicky Hopkins, Keith Moon (on unpaid leave from The Who) and John Paul Jones on bass, if memory serves.

If you haven’t heard it, here’s how it goes: start with a bolero beat overlaid by some amazing sonic Beck-isms that roar and soar and sound like incoming in a war movie. Then, slam on the brakes for a ferocious bridge that might have been forged in the smithies of Mordor, a Yardbirds-style raveup powered by Keith Moon! (To get an idea of how delicious this combo is, think of dating Miss August and Miss September at the same time!)

Then, back to the bolero, now jazzed up and interrupted by Beck’s screeching, insistent interruptions and a dash to the finish line not unlike the one in which Mad Max is chased by mutants. All in two minutes and thirty seconds!

Are you a Baby Boomer that still rocks? Or a fan of rock’s golden era of any age? Do you remember the first vinyl record you bought? Do you still play your favorite songs two or three times in a row? Then you will enjoy Went To See the Gypsy! The title is from a Dylan song about Elvis, and it evokes the journey I’ve been on since the Beatles took America by storm in 1964. My friends and I were so taken by the Beatles that we made up a fake-Beatles band with tennis racket guitars and lip synced the songs to the neighbors at a nickel a pop! And I’ve been following the rock gypsy caravans ever since, from the British Invasion and Motown bands on AM transistor radios, to the psychedelic revolution on FM radio, to punk rock on 12-inch LPs, to alternative music on CDs, and all of it over again on digital. In Went To See the Gypsy I share all my favorites from decades of listening to rock and blues. I write about all the big groups, Beatles, Stones, Who, Motown, Doors, Dylan, the Band, Cream, Hendrix, U2, Nirvana, but you’ll hear about my own personal favorites as well, Spirit and Nazz, Karla Bonoff and Warren Zevon and Syd Barrett. Do you remember “Beck’s Bolero?” Or where you were when you first heard “Because the Night?” Do you remember the beautiful voice and big soul of Minnie Riperton? Favorite concerts, songs, songwriters, rock movies and books, my turns in bands and writing for fanzines, it’s all in Went To See the Gypsy.