Warning: long.
I liked the video, but find it more than a little ironic that many of the people rushing to defend Sklar seemed to have also missed Sklar's point.
Let me take on an example here:
That's... a bunch of rules. You know, the thing Sklar himself said we shouldn't be applying here about gear or how to play.
And while I certainly agree that being entirely a support instrument is one way to think about the bass,
it is not the only way. Wasn't that Sklar's point?
When people go to a Marcus Miller concert, who's it really about? I'd argue pretty strongly that it's about Marcus Miller, and I also disagree with the idea that somehow automatically makes Miller immature and egotistic. Consider this thread:
Songs where the bass line IS the song.
In a lot of those songs, it actually
is about the bass line, and I'm totally OK with that. Given how popular that thread has been, I think it's safe to say there are bass players here on TB who also think that it is, in fact, OK for the bass to be more of a lead instrument... at least some of the time. I think bass is a versatile enough instrument to have more than one single, rigidly-defined role, and that moving outside that narrow definition is not, in fact, indicative of some kind of character flaw.
Sklar himself said your job as a bass player is to do something you enjoy. I take that to mean the whole range, from hammering out three-note Ramones tracks badly in your bedroom with no knowledge about technique or theory to being a session musician on highly technical jazz to being Peter Hook. Play in the pocket if you want to. Play "lead bass" if you want to. It's all good.
And while I don't agree with Spaghetti's tone (dude, seriously, lighten up) or his lack of respect for Sklar, I also have to say that I do agree that the majority of music Sklar has made is... well, let's just say not my cup of tea. DrCheese posted a huge list of albums Sklar worked on, and I think I own none of them. I find most of the stuff on that list just doesn't suit me. Frankly, a lot of it just strikes me as kind of... boring. It leans toward folk/folk-pop—not entirely, obviously, but it leans that way—and that's just not the kind of music I'm into. It doesn't mean Sklar is bad, by any stretch, and I think that's where the criticism went off the rails, but the stuff he tends to play on is not for everyone, myself definitely included.
To wit, when I first started playing, my instructor asked me to generate a list of songs I wanted to learn. Being a little OCD, the next week I brought back a list of about 120 songs, from simple stuff like the Police and Talking Heads to a somewhat more involved stuff like Rush, Yes, Tool, and Level 42. How many were Sklar? Zero. None, nada, zilch, empty set. His enormous body of work just fails to intersect with my interests, both as a listener and as a bass player.
I think the mistake is to confuse what you like and what you respect. There is music I like that I don't particularly respect (we all have guilty pleasures, right?) and there's lots of music out there I respect, but don't particularly like.
Sklar's a great example of the latter. I have tremendous respect for his ability to work with so many people for such a long time, and he seems from what limited information I have like a genuinely decent human being. There's no doubt that he's a talented musician and I'm sure he came up with many of those lines on short order and executed them expertly, something few if any of us here on TB could do—certainly way beyond any skill level I'll ever achieve. He must be
great to work with because he sure gets asked back a lot. Major props to him for his obviously illustrious career, clearly respectable... but it doesn't make me enjoy most of his actual music. If someone told me the only songs I'd ever be able to play are songs Sklar played on, I'd probably never pick up a bass again. That'd make me sad, but I'm not gonna spend time playing music I don't like.
Nor, I think, would Lee Sklar himself want me to.
If only there were a way to delete unnecessary files. 
