What are your favourite basslines, asks Tony Bacon? Answers come from bass players with Lloyd Cole, XTC, the Bhundu Boys, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, and 'Rockschool'. And what a surprising bunch of answers they are...

There seems to be a surfeit of bass players in our fave drinking club, the Wang Bar, so let's do a quick poll of fave basslines. Who's this clutching a glass by the jukebox? Blimey, it's Lawrence Donegan from Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. He appears to be dancing to Prince's 'Sign O The Times'.

"Prince plays the keyboard bass," he informs me, "it's fairly sexy and it proves that simplicity is the best thing of all, you know? You don't have to show off to be good. So simple and so groovy, don't you think? And it's got plenty of room to breathe. We tried to work out what he was playing it on, sounds like a Prophet VS or something like that."

I leave him to his dancing.

Who's that in the corner with a book? Oh my gosh, it's Colin Moulding of XTC, aka Dukes Of Stratosfear. Fave bassline, Col?

He looks up. "'Living In The Past' by Jethro Tull. I think it was one of the first riffs I ever learned to play — when I was learning, the riffs were the thing to play. I think it's in 5/4, one of those funny time signatures. Glenn Cornick, the bass player, had some monstrous bass, I think it was a Gibson something or other.

"Did you see that TV documentary on Ian Anderson a month or so back?" asks Colin. I say no, as David Mankaba of the Bhundu Boys brings a drink over to our table. "Bloody terrible, it was."

David of the Bhundus pipes up. "Stanley Clarke is my favourite bass player, and Mark King is my favourite as well. I forget the name of the track I like best of Stanley Clarke, but my favourite of Mark King's playing at the moment is 'Running In The Family', I like the vocals as well, and I like the arrangement of it."

Who's this? Ah, David, Colin, this is Henry Thomas, he does the low notes on that "Rockschool' TV programme and he's playing with Working Week at the moment, and this is Phil Mulford, bassist with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, as well as Barbara Thompson, and First Light. Got a fave bass line or three, Henry?

"'Don't Blow A Good Thing' by Vesta Williams has a very unusual sort of bass line, not the standard timing, it's really funky. There are certain ways of playing on the beat that sound really exciting grooves, but this one doesn't do that, it has really weird placings and accents for the notes, but still works — it might even be a synth."

And Phil? A couple of faves? "Ian Dury's 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick', the brilliant bassline is by Norman Watt-Roy. It's a mumbling, repeating, sixteeny line, very busy but without getting in the way, it fits the song perfectly. And I'd mention a track called 'You've Got It' on a Barry Finnerty solo album, the bass is by Anthony Jackson. I was so intrigued by it I wrote the part out," a gasp of disbelief from the chaps here, "and it's amazing. There's an E minor section where everyone takes a solo, and what Jackson does has nothing to do with E minor — there's flattened fifths, wholetones — a killer bass part."

'Sign 0 The Times' comes (eventually) to a halt on the jukebox, so Lawrence of the Commotions strolls over to what we may now call the bass player's table. "I've been thinking," he says. "Do you know that Talking Heads song called 'Pulled Up', from their very first album? I love Tina Weymouth. Apparently the producer wanted to get a session bassist in, whereas the band insisted that Tina plays it. And as far as I'm concerned she's developed into a great bass player, she's fantastic. But the idea of a session player playing that is ludicrous."

Murmurs of approval from round the table, and a clinking of glasses. "What about 'Good Vibrations' by the Beach Boys?" asks Colin. "Very Beach Boys, that hippy, high, plectrumy sound."

I think it's Carol Kaye — she was a (talk of the devil) session bassist, and did a lot of the Motown 1960s hits as well. "Did she play that?" Colin says, "I thought it might have been Carl Wilson, but maybe the Boys just did the harmonies. I like the style, anyway: high, tiptoey, echoed sort of bass. If the bass could do pizzicato, that's what it would sound like. I really like it when basses play those kind of inverted riffs, without any sort of rootness to them and almost irrespective of what's going on in the rest of the band."

Lawrence takes up the Carol Kaye connection. "I really like the bassline to Smokey Robinson's 'My Girl'. I think it's Carol Kaye — you know Bruce Thomas from Elvis Costello's Attractions? He's got a book by her that has all the Motown bass lines, I've always wanted to get it off him. But 'My Girl' is the first pentatonic you ever learn from books, note for note, a run up a pentatonic scale. It's indicative of that era of bass playing, which relied much more on feel than on technique."

Henry chips in: "Everyone must like 'Good Times' by Chic: it's simple, incredibly effective, it's become an institution. It's like people who pick up a guitar and want to play heavy metal might start up with the 'Sunshine Of Your Love' riff — it's the same with the bass and this line."

David gets in one of his faves while Henry pauses for breath. "Verdine White of Earth Wind & Fire is a great player — my favourite track is 'Fantasy', or 'September'. I like the arrangement and the way he fits in the line. Fantastic."

"One last one," insists Colin, "we've got to have a Beatles track. I'd choose 'Rain', that real whoopy psychedelic sound, that was McCartney's style, sort of a stunted whoop. I think this track is pretty chaotic, it sounds like the one take cos Ringo makes an awful fluff in the middle where he doesn't get the roll right, and the bass playing is not the greatest, but it just has a lovely feel to it, so off the cuff that it sounds exciting, he's bending and whooping like crazy."

And what about the great sampled crunch on Propaganda's 'Frozen Faces', I plead, or the 'Bergerac' TV theme, or... but it's no good. They've all gone. Oh well. Now have I got enough for a cab home?