Who's the better slapper: Flea or Les Claypool?

[JimmyThunder]

The "slap" thing is Underrated. It's only overrated to you because you are on talkbass, having bass guitar being somewhat relevant in your life, lol. Most people that arn't actually into music have no idea what slap bass even is. Obviously, the most common way to play bass is not using slap or pop, which would make just playing bass in general overrated, wouldn't it? Of course some of my favorite bass players don't do the whole slap and pop thing but I love funk, and I love a good bass player that can not only just play a bass line but beat the thing up once in awhile. Ahh..Mike Gordon.. perfect example of that.

 

[etherealme]

There was a fork in the road of Claypool's career somewhere around the time between the Highball with the Devil and before the recording of Antipop and the whole Ozzfest mainstream attention debacle. He could have completely changed his style for these divergent experiments and become more of a versatile player. Just listen to The Brown Album, Highball with the Devil and the fender jazz pop slapping on Rhinoplasty. He could have branched out and become a more nuanced and overall more versatile player but instead several things happened in the place of that. The jam band scene only encouraged his tendencies to fall out of the pocket and be a "lead" or front man. I would have liked to see what more of his solo career could have been on it's own. Of Fungi and Foe was a return to these experimental tangents I speak of and its the main reason the latest Primus album, Green Naugahyde sounds the way it does.

Nowadays Les' playing is a bit inconsistent live, especially with Primus. If pressed I would have to say Flea though I do think this is like comparing apples and car tires. I did recently appreciate Flea's playing for the song on his recent collaboration with Mars Volta members in ANTEMASQUE.

 

[basschanges]

There's good slap, there's bad slap. In the realm of good slappers are tons of professional players, none of whom sound the exact same and almost all of whom could play things the other players could not. Comparisons are fun to spark discussion but ultimately invalid.

 

[etherealme]

Give me any example of a collaboration Les Claypool worked on that didn't end up sounding like Primus.

Not Primus - just regular ol' slapping bass style. Especially during the refrain. Don't even make the argument that it does, because how different is this from Tony Levin slapping on "Sleepless?"

And again.

 

[jnuts1]

no way, that's primus all the way. no way could Les play like that. or does this qualify as a cover?

 

[David Jayne]

Apples and oranges. Flea is more of a pocket player where Claypool is a 'stunt' bassist.