Basshunter
“It wasn't until the age of 46 that I caught my first bass, but boy was it worth the wait.”
John Allbergian, professionally known by his pen name Basshunter, is a Swedish author and a fisherman specialized in the hunting of the European bass (Dicentrarchus labrax). While his poor fishing abilities are often publicly ridiculed, he has still made a somewhat successful career out of documenting his various basshunting expeditions in a popular series of audiobooks.
Early life[edit | edit source]
Basshunter developed an obsession with the European sea bass early-on in his childhood following a tragic incident that occurred in the large pond near his parents' residence. Young Basshunter was practicing diving when he accidentally bumped into a bass swimming-by, which then bit Basshunter's left eye out of its socket as self-defense[1]. Basshunter swore revenge and immediately went out to unleash his wrath onto the fish counter of a nearby supermarket, but his thirst for vengeance wasn't satisfied with violating mere lifeless slobs of meat.
After graduating from high school, Basshunter bought his own fishing boat and headed out to the western coastline of Halmstad to begin his crusade against all the basses of the European seas. He started chronicling his adventures and selling them as audiobooks in order to finance himself, and while his hunts were mostly fruitless[2] his audiobooks began wildly circulating in the internet.
Professional career[edit | edit source]
While Basshunter had already started gaining some attention in the Swedish audiobook scene, it wasn't until his 1990 release Fishing on the Wild Side that he truly broke through to the mainstream of fishing literature. The release marked a major shift in Basshunter's narrative style, as the book described his first ever successful bass hunt instead of the previously explored various failures he had experienced. Indeed, for 28 years Basshunter had sailed the northern seas without catching one single bass, and now with great pride he boasted about the fateful encounter he had with an unsuspecting bass while hunting in the Baltic Sea. Granted, he had accidentally crashed his boat into the reefs and struck a near-by swimming bass, but it was a heroic tale nevertheless.
This sudden tonal shift in his prose alienated some of Basshunter's earliest fans, with some of his critics stating that "basshunta sux now hes a fockgin cunt and ad bullshit liar!!", and "he is fuckgn shit he should jusf retire and die >:(!!1". This, however, didn't stop Basshunter from producing sequels to his hit audiobook. And sequels he did produce - as the 1990 expedition has so far been the only successful bass hunt in his career, most of Basshunter's subsequent works have been reworkings of same exact fish story with ever-increasing grandiosity of his deeds.
Audience[edit | edit source]
While one would think that Basshunter's audience would mainly consist of Swedish fishermen, his audiobooks are oddly enough popular in some eastern European countries and even in central American nightclubs. There is, however, a good reason for this, and that is the fact that Swedish as a language just sounds really funny, and requesting DJs to play some obscure Swedish audiobooks in a club setting is a hilarious practical joke. Aside from that, no one really listens to any of Basshunter's audiobooks mainly due to jarringly repetitive and unimaginative nature of his works.
Notable Selections of Basshunter's Bibliography[edit | edit source]
- 1986: Those Bastards Must Die
- 1990: Fishing on the Wild Side
- 1991: Sailing the Seas of Bass
- 1993: Båt Anna
- 1995: Fishing On the West Side
- 1997: Fishing On.
- 1998: Of Seas and Bass
- 1999: Fishing On the Brink of the Apocalypse
- 2001: Dangerous Exploits in Lake Vänern
- 2002: Fishing On the East Side
- 2006: Vi Fiska i Min Lite Båten
- 2009: Bass Generation
- 2010: Fishing on the Wild Side: Special 20th Anniversary Edition