Thank you for picking apart everything I wrote.
I didn't write that every song put out by a prog band has to be stupidly long. I love Gentle Giant, but I don't think I've ever heard a song from them which was over 10 minutes long. Also, I don't really mean that every prog song has to have untraditional time signatures. How many songs do Pink Floyd have with untraditional time signatures? Only one immediately comes to mind, Money. The point is they did it at some point - I believe all the early big names of the genre did, so why not point it out as something they had in common?
About the instrumental excellence, well, you may not rank Wakeman very high, but we both know that prog is full of people known for their skills with instruments. Instrumental skill does not have the same importance in other genres like f.ex goth rock or new wave. You even mention that Emerson and the guys from Gentle Giant were skilled, so what's the beef? It seems you're really just want to point out that there are exceptions to the rule. Well, yes, I know that - it's usually how it goes with "rules". If I knew the post was going to be scrutinized and so misinterpreted by you, I would have added more "often", "usually" and "sometimes" to the post. Maybe then it would've been more to your satisfaction.
Just what killed prog, okay, maybe it tripped in it's own feet, but I'm sure guys like this and their music also had some influence on how the average music consumer of the late 70s and early 80s viewed the genre.
