For me, Bass is my world and play about 1 hour in the morning and then myabe 5 hours on and off in the afternoon, and I havnt seen anyone with nearly as much enthusiasm as I have for Bass in the entire time that Iv'e played and that annoys me, coz Bass is sooooo much better than most people(both musicians and non-musicians) give it credit for, they just think its the boom........boom...... boom..boom instrument and thats it, and I knw there just ignorant, but thats more reason why they shouldnt comment in the first place.

would anyone agree that most Bassist's are generally wierd people, or would you say thats just a steriotype,

man goin from trombone to bass was kinda weird at first but i finally got the bass thing goin

you never really appreciate just how important a GOOD bass player is until you have to play with a bad one. No kidding.. a bass player with bad time and who can't groove or play in the pocket can single handedly kill a band.
some great players are out there that have brought the bass into the spotlight (flea, victor wooten, stanley clarke, among many others), but the unfortunate side effect of that is players who rush to try to get to that flashy level without ever just learning to groove. plus, with the advent of tablature, many can't read music, and many can't read chord changes and can't improvise.
i'll take a bass player that can play a simple groove with GOOD TIME, and can read, and can handle changes over a slappy tappy fancy pants any day.
as for bassists being generally wierd people.. sure they are
think about it... it takes a special personality to play bass and to truly understand and appreciate its role in music. to be willing to get past your own egotistical desire for the spotlight and just lay the groove down.

thats true, I love a good bass breakdown thow, I just love breakdowns

sure, it's always cool when the bass gets a moment in the sun. as long as the player doesn't spend so much time working on fills and stuff that they never really work on the functional part of bass playing. too many players try to run before they can crawl. bass is about laying down the time and the harmonic structure of a tune. cool fills are great if the rest of the responsiblities remain taken care of.
trust me... the basics are what will get you paid to play bass more often than not.

Thats good solid advice Steve, thanks, how long you been playing for?

I started when I was 14, so that would make it about 18 years. But I earn my living playing trombone, so that generally gets more attention these days. But playing bass really helps me understand chord changes better, has helped with rhythm, studying latin bass grooves really helps me follow rhythms on bone when playing latin tunes (try finding 1 when you're not used to latin bass lines!!!!), and many more advantages. no matter what other instrument(s) you play, bass is a great axe to know.
as a side note. when i started playing way back when, all I wanted to be was Flea and Cliff Burton. I wanted to play all the fancy stuff. Somewhere down the line, I had to go back, start over and learn the basics. I had to learn to read, and get away from tablature. i had to learn how to take a set of changes and walk a bass line. I had to do some serious work with a metronome. these are the things that are important to me now.

he he cool I always and still do want to be John Myung, he was my inspiration so yeh

a Dream Theater fan, eh? Those guys are insane. I kinda lost track of them after Kevin Moore left the group. well.. good luck with your learning, man. enjoy your new bass.