“My Favorite Album” is a weekly column in which we ask a musician exactly what the title suggests — to name their favorite album of all time. This week it's riotous L.A. rock & rollers The Darbies, who conclude their May residency at the Redwood Bar on Tuesday…

Aerosmith
Rocks (Columbia)

Jani Jaakko (vocals): “It speaks to the raw aspects of rock & roll’s primal nature. “Back in the Saddle” is pure animalistic release. You can’t hear this record exploding from your speakers and ever be the same. It’s why I gravitated to heavy, pulsing rock & roll music at all. And “Rats In The Cellar” — when I first heard it in '01, it literally started my puberty as a distraught youth experimenting on the fringe of darker musings. There was a place where freaks like me could be heroes. The whole spectrum of rock & roll and emotion is here: from the soft, sour croon of “Home Tonight” to the bludgeoning rhythms of “Get the Lead Out.” If you’re gonna wanna hear timeless, explosive, eternally raw rock & roll, throw this album on wax and spin it out in your bedroom with the volume turned up past “brain melt.” This record is the ground zero for the dolled-up, elegantly wasted yet typically American character of rock & roll.”

Joe (bass): “We need new clothes and somewhere to stay, but rock & roll is how we make it through. We sacrificed everything and withdrew from society to create something bigger then life itself … music! That is the feeling we get from hearing this record. Everything is a wavelength. Dust off your fucking quantum physics books and see what I mean.”

The Darbies plays with The Drained at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, May 28 at the Redwood Bar.

Credit: Columbia

Credit: Columbia

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