So, I was just fiddling around on audioscrobbler.com, wondering who people were listening to, and ended up searching on a whole load of bassist’s names, to see who people were actually listening to.
As I’ve mentioned before, The Scrob is a really interesting chart in that it’s not what people are buying, or what they own but what they are actually listening to – what it is that people are taking down from the CD shelf, or dialing up on their ipod and choosing to listen to. The membership is, I think, a couple of hundred thousand, and largely, I guess, a young, tech-savvy slightly geeky bunch, on the whole…
So here are the bassists I searched on, in order.
Jaco Pastorius – 4306
Victor Wooten – 2608
Marcus Miller – 2466
Stanley Clarke – 1002
Jonas Hellborg – 499
Tony Levin – 399
John Patitucci – 388
Stuart Hamm – 342
Michael Manring – 318
Dave Holland – 275
Billy Sheehan – 274
Brian Bromberg – 244
Eberhard Weber – 233
Wayman Tisdale – 168
Avishai Cohen – 141
Renaud Garcia Fons – 126
Jimmy Haslip – 100
Adam Nitti – 100
Mark King – 94
Bass Extremes (Wooten/Bailey) – 88
Reid Anderson – 74
Alain Caron – 64
Doug Wimbish – 59
Jeff Berlin – 54
Trip Wamsley – 51
Steve Lawson – 49
Seth Horan – 47
Randy Coven – 42
Abraham Laboriel – 37
Bill Dickens – 28
Gerald Veasley – 27
Mo Foster – 26
Mark Egan – 22
Percy Jones – 18
Michael Dimin – 10
Matthew Garrison – 7
John Lester – 7
Glen Moore – 7
Laurence Cottle – 5
Fieldy – 5
Janek Gwizdala – 3
Now, bear in mind that this relies on them being entered into the iTunes/CDDB data base under their own name – some of these players maybe be listed as ‘the such and such band’ or something else. Feel free to have a browse at audioscrobbler.com and see who else you can find. Lemme know, and I’ll add them to the list…
Soundtrack – John Goldie, ‘Turn And Twist’ (jazz trio, with the marvellous Ewen Vernal on bass).
