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Originally Posted by Guybrush
Nah, it's not just that. Take a band like Bad Brains or Kamelot or Eagles of Death Metal. They fit into genres that are much more defined so that even before hearing or seeing them, you could have a pretty good idea of what they're gonna sound like or look like.
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Appealing to aesthetic cliches like how Eagles of Death Metal are clearly a forgettable hard rawk band on sight strikes me more as lacking an identity.
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The psychedelic rock and especially early prog wasn't really defined like that.
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Nah if you saw people in hippie getups and a liquid light show behind them you could safely guess they were playing psychedelic music. If they looked like a bunch of dorks (thinking Genesis here but also the art school types that made up Floyd and Crimson) then you could expect them to be prog.
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You couldn't look at Pink Floyd and know what they were gonna sound like. They could've sounded like the kinks or maybe mothers of Invention. And I'm pretty sure any contrived attempt at promoting some image is something they would find vulgar if they thought it would distract from the music.
Even today if Gilmour plays to thousands and have the backing of choirs or symphony orchestras, he still goes on stage with whatever black t-shirt he could find on the floor.
The only way to know PF is to listen and when their music often is kinda slow and ponderous, people don't have time for that and perhaps dismiss it as pretentious (which is fine if that's how they feel).
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There's more to identity than costumery. I'd say that Floyd is one of those artists who are so well-known that their sound precedes them in terms of public opinion. The bolded was what I was getting at since that criticism dates back to their heyday and has been carried into modern criticism of the band, and I doubt that's because people are unable to associate cliches with them (though I think that people can and do pin such things on Floyd).