Why is slap/pop bass used so rarely?
 

I only really hear slap/pop bass in Funk, and I've never really listened to Funk yet. Slap bass is making me want to though(But there's so much punk I still want to listen to before I'll do that..). But I did hear it in Red Hot Chili Peppers, Maximum the Hormone and the Infectious Grooves.
Why is it that I never really heard about this technique before that? Why is it that it's used so rarely in other music? Speaking of that, most music doesn't use bass all that well it seems. I love the bass The Minutemen and Nomeansno and some other punk, but in most music I can barely even hear it, since it's just playing some root notes of the guitar chord.(although punk does mostly have seperate basslines).
Slap Bass and Pop Bass sound so cool it made me appriciate Bass a lot more than before I knew what it was.

Try some Primus.

Geezer Butler, Tina Weymouth, and Peter Hook are all underrated bassists IMO. I agree with the OP though, Mike Watt kicks ass.

If I'm not mistaken funk and R&B players where the first to *really* popularize it. It's somewhat prevalent in rockabilly too I think.

If I had to guess I'd say it's just because most of the time bassists aren't really a central part of the song. Their role is more supportive, filling things out, adding depth. Slapping and Popping really stands out in a song and if that's not wanted, why utilize it?

Not docking it or players who do it at all, btw. Huge, huge, huge fan of Mike Watt. I will meet him before I die.

Larry Grahams stuff with Sly and the Family Stone and Graham Central station is great for that slappy porno bass stuff. He invented it you know, slapped that mutha to make up for the lack of a drummer in his and before he was slapping for Sly.

Now, Sly fired him, and it's my opinion that ol' Larry was just too damn funky for his own good, and funked Sly over by being too much of a bass slapping genius, and the family stone only had enough funk threshhold for one of them, and Larry Graham and the family stone sounds like the title to a porno parody of "Romancing the Stone to me, so it was for the best that Larry slapped on into the Graham Central Station albums and Sly Stone funked into oblivion/

Definitely. My favourite bass player is this guy at the moment: