Stu Hamm, This guy is a fingerstyle player who does tons of slapping, bobbling and tapping. Some of the mega-fast percussive stuff he plays sounds like he has a whole drum kit at his disposal. This guy is unbelivably talented and plays lots of very clever syncopated two/three part music with tapping but for some reason he keeps getting booed by his audiences when he plays live with Satriani. I'm a mild man but it makes me want to straff the lot with machine gun fire even though that might sound out of place after the moonlight sonata on bass... !
John Myung, - try YTSE JAM (that's majesty backwards) from When dream and day unite by dream theater. Any bassist who can keep up with Pettrucci (who plays one of his best solos on that same track) is some form of God, I kept replaying it to make sure I wasn't dreaming. (o.k that bit was bull**** but it was well worth re-hearing!)
Billy Sheehan, - perhaps my favourite bass solo is on a rush tribute album called working man on Magna Carta records. He does an awesome and very melodic solo before Steve Morse made the mistake of rewriting Alex Lifeson's utterly perfect guitar solo "the Ghost of the Aragon" from "La villa strangiato". He also played some really amazing stuff on Glenn Tipton's solo album "Baptism of Fire".
Tony Franklin, - plays fretless bass. Guitar and Piano shredder Tony MaCalpine picked him as his bassist. This speaks volumes. He's tremendous.
Tony La Rue, - Percussive slapster, plays with steve Morse.
David La vin (I think that's his name, plays for the awesome King crimson), check out their album Discipline.
Geddy Lee - from Rush. Good shredder but mainly writer of some fantastic bass melodies, a real musician.
If I couldn't laugh at myself how could I laugh at someone less ridiculous?
