I think that chords on bass sound like **** if you allow them to. By that I mean, if you're gonna play bass like a rhythm guitar then yeah it's not gonna sound too good, but by throwing some chords into the fray for an added emphasis, then what's that gonna hurt? I play chords every so often on my bass, not as often as I do other stuff but plain and simple I do use them. In fact. I'm gonna make a song using a lot of bass chords just to throw at you. Now, in response to the question of the thread. What made my bass skills jump is I'd watch others play, get some good videos of les claypool, victor wooten and any other really good bassist you can find. I have some videos of Alex Webster from cannibal corpse doing all sorts of things on bass from slaps to taps and it was quite impressive. I'd just watch what they'd do and see what I could do with those same motions and so forth, but you'd be amazed at what you can learn just by simply observing.