Zep broached the fringes of Metal, but to me, they always had a commercial aspect to their music.

Jimmy Page emphatically states they were not a Metal band. They were more Blues Rock/Hard Rock with touches of English Folk music.

Anyone around ???

Yah, it's unfortunately been pretty dead so far this week here. To be fair, I think that's a forum-wide thing these past few days. I was working a lot of hours the last couple of days, you see.

I did some research on Nathan East last night. I suspect he'll drop to the 50s or something. Planning to raise Pino into the 40s-ish probably. Need to research other guys on this list I"m not that familiar with.

Shit, for the sake of spurring discussion (and keeping progress going, doh), I'm gonna do a minor list revision right now!

...or not. Not quite yet.

Question, when did Larry Graham exactly start slapping? Late 60s, right? And did he slap and pop with mutes like people do today, or was it very rudimentary? Bassfreak claimed on the old forum that Larry's playing was very very rudimentary and basically an infancy version of modern slapping as a style and Louis Johnson brought it up to speed and matured slapping as a real distinct style. I've been reading about this tonight and I see no evidence this is true. Speaking of which, when did Bootsy start slapping? (He's the other 'early innovator' of it right???)

Off the top of my head, Larrry started slapping much earlier than the late 60's. He came up with a ruidementary slap style when he first started playing in a band with his mother and since they didn't have a drummer Larry took it upon himself to add the percussive effect by slapping his bass, popping his strings, and adding other percussive accents to the band. After he joined up with Sly' he added that style which fit well with the bands funk style

Johnson perhaps upped the ante by having his slap style placed more out front in the Brothers Johnson ensemble.

Bootsy wasn't slapping much with James Brown...circa early 70's. James style of funk was more fingerstyle syncopation. Bootsy was more innovative in the electronics he added to his repitoire with P-Funk. Sort of electronic overload IMO.

That's actually pretty funny. What is that a movie?

Stu --

What would be a good example of some of Larry's earlier slap work? "Thank You..." was played on bass by Sly himself IIRC

It's apparently a British TV show, The Mighty Boosh.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... search=tag

The only comedy show I've ever seen reference Allan Holdsworth.

I had not heard that before. Every bass credit on TYFBMElf I've seen has been Larry Graham. I did see Sly credited with playing guitar on that song, but I'm 99% positive that Larry played that bass part. Everybody may be a "Star"...but everybody can't play that bassline...especially Sly IMO.

I remember reading it on the old forum in the bass subforum. Glad to hear it's Larry.

...and yep, Wikipedia agrees. Awesome!

Was that in fact the first recorded slap performance ever?

Moved (down) Louis Johnson & Nathan East. Cheers!

Okay, so I did a pretty extensive look at Marcus Miller's discog. A fair amount of stuff that could be classified as rock, indeed, but most of it (sadly) for artists who are either forgotten or just not really talked about these days. That said, he's such a good musician he probably deserves a spot here anyway. Would you mind making some particular song recommendations out of Miller's rock discog Stu???

List is STARTING to take shape. More to be done IMO. Could use some more input (Ssoyd & gang...particularly hard rock, prog, and even you "metal" guys). Nice work Ariel. I'll get back on some of the other stuff.