Taste Test: Jake Stone

THE FIRST ALBUM I BOUGHT WITH MY OWN MONEY
It was The Real Thing by Faith No More, on cassette, from Parramatta shopping centre. I liked that song Epic a lot. I loved the way Mike Patton looked in the video, I thought he looked like a nutcase. I think maybe it was '92, '93, I was probably about 13.

THE ALBUM I'M LOVING RIGHT NOW
I don't really listen to albums that much any more. The last albums I bought as actual records were the SBTRKT record and the Gotye record, but while I like both of those guys as one-offs, I don't know if as albums they're quite as satisfying. Which is kind of my point: there's not a whole album that I'm loving at the moment, and I don't even remember the last album I loved like that. Like, I really like Japandroids, they have this great, counter-cultural aesthetic. I think Lana Del Rey is a great lyric writer. But most of the time I'm just taking a grab-bag of single tracks.

MY FAVOURITE PARTY ALBUM
Beastie Boys' albums; records I listened to when I was a kid like Paul's Boutique and License To Ill. Classic Nelly tracks like Hot In Herre. And any classic '90s hip hop record like Bell Biv Devoe or Heavy D & The Boys or Blackstreet. The '90s in hip hop was a great time; there was just so much heart and humour in it. They're great party records to listen to in a contemporary sense, but they're also filled with nostalgia.

MY FAVOURITE COMEDOWN ALBUM
I can think of answers to this question in my mind: the first two Portishead records, the Frank Ocean album. But, to be honest, there isn't one. Music just doesn't play that kind of role in my life. It's an artistic, creative and social thing, not a soundtrack. If I like a song, I just love that song; I don't love it because it makes it more fun to go do sports or something. There's no perfect running record, no perfect workout record, no perfect comedown record for me.

THE MOST SURPRISING RECORD IN MY COLLECTION
I have a full box set of crooner records, but, then again, I think everyone should. Most genres have one exponent who is worth listening to; even if you don't like crooners, there's no denying the greatness of Frank Sinatra. I also have a box set of the Eurythmics. I like jazz and lounge. I love Sade. None of this is surprising to me – I don't care if something's fucking cool or not. Man, I'm 32, I gave up on that shit years ago. But, when you talk to kids 15 through 19, and they're so desperate to be current and to fit in with what's going, or their social group, or whatever, they don't care about the content of the music, just whether it's cool. So, some of them would be dismayed to find out I listen to Sade, I'm sure.

THE FIRST GIG I EVER ATTENDED
The Beastie Boys and Helmet. I was a massive Helmet fan, basically a little metalhead, but my cousin was way more into the Beastie Boys. And before the internet, you needed that person who was a little bit older, who knew about things. He gave me Check Your Head, which was, I think, the album they were touring on. So we went to see them, and he got me really stoned. I was out of it, and really paranoid, so for the first half of the show I hid underneath a car in the carpark, and totally missed Helmet. But I came in to watch Beastie Boys, and I was so high I didn't understand why they would leave the stage and come back as a live band, then come back to do a DJ set; I didn't really get that they were the same guys, it was very confusing to me. It was confusing, but fuckin' awesome.

THE WEIRDEST GIG EXPERIENCE I'VE EVER HAD
Bluejuice have had some fucking strange shows. Like, people setting off fire extinguishers in the middle of the club that make everyone in the crowd vomit. That was pretty funny, just a host of people vomiting into our rider. Other times, like playing on the coast, in Gosford or whatever, where two girls are punching each other in the crowd. That really happened, and I totally misjudged just how wild it really was down there. I jumped into the crowd, and they basically stripped me naked; I was crowd surfing and people were tearing my clothes off as I went past. I ended up crawling back on stage in only my underwear. Also, being arrested on stage at the Metro for wearing a real police shirt, and being dragged off stage by undercover police officers literally in the middle of a song. That was pretty amazing; that video's actually on YouTube – everyone should watch that.

THE COOLEST PERSON I'VE EVER MET
Karen O and The Strokes are far-and-away the coolest celebrities I've ever met and shoptalked with. If you're looking for coolness, both of them really satisfied on that level.

THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY CRUSH I'VE EVER HAD
When I was a kid I wrote a letter to Demi Moore after I saw A Few Good Men, where I said she looked nice in a sailor's outfit. I used to write a lot of letters, which was really fucking weird, man. I also wrote a letter to Courtney Thorne-Smith, who was the boring one on Melrose Place; I was heaps attracted to her. I remember getting really upset when I realised that I was never going to have a genuine relationship with Jennifer Aniston from Friends. I got really sad, I was almost crying, talking to my friend Sam about it. I was like: 'I have to get famous if I'm ever going to meet her, if I'm ever going to be with her!' And Sam was like: 'What the fuck are you talking about? You're a 14-year-old boy!'”