The acceptance of shorter songs in today's prog

In the old days there seemed to be a pretty big gap between so called regular rock and progressive rock. Sure, there were art rock bands and some other bands who had some prog rockish songs at times(Roxy Music and Styx come to mind)but most of them weren't typically considered prog at the time or even part of prog. Back then you had albums like Jethro Tull's "thick as a brick" that took up a whole album and "Tales from topographic oceans" by Yes which made up four 20 minute tracks over the course of two vinyl discs. That's only four songs to listen to in over an hour. Those make up probably the most extreme examples of prog's so called "excess" from the glory days but of course there are other less extreme examples. Even Yes themselves had other side long tracks but they weren't the only ones. ELP and Pink Floyd also had side long tracks and King Crimson came close at least one time and so did Genesis(with "Supper's Ready" which just missed out on being a side long track). Back in those days shorter songs by those bands(as well as others)tended to be the exception rather than the rule. Think of "a venture" off the Yes album or "I know what I like" from Selling England by the Pound or even the old timey ELP songs that seemed to show the "fun side" of the band. The majority of these bands seemed to focus on the longer tracks though and I think that's one thing that tended to separate prog from other genres. Genres such as psychedelia(prog's older brother if you will)often included longer songs but they were the exception rather than the rule. Take the "In a Gadda Da Vida" album by Iron Butterfly for example. Although you could argue it is a proto prog album there is no mistaking it's psychedelic flavor. To illustrate my point here side two consists of the famous side long title track while all the other songs on the album(those that made up the first side)were shorter tracks. I believe that was the case with most other psychedelic bands as well. Seventies prog seems to be unique in that there seemed to be a deliberate effort to make several (if not most)of the songs as long as possible. 

All of this seemed to be done in the name of musical adventurousness and exploration and while there are still many prog bands making longer songs many of them aren't. I sometimes get the feeling that if many of these newer crossover bands(crossover seems to be the prog sub-genre with the most shorter and most accessible songs)were making this music in the 70's then they would not be labelled prog(or at least not as much). The one band on here from the old days who are labelled as crossover prog that stands out(for me at least)is the Moody Blues. I'll be honest I typically haven't really considered the Moody Blues to be a true prog band in the past simply because the vast majority of their songs were short and simple and didn't really stretch out that much like the other prog bands did. I suppose there's other reasons why the Moodies were considered prog(lyrical themes and heavy use of the mellotron for example)but maybe I'm guilty of prog snobbery in the sense that because they didn't have the complexity or song length of Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, ELP, etc I didn't think of them as prog. Even Pink Floyd seemed way more prog to me. I still liked the Moodies but I had a hard time(and to some degree still do)considering them a "full blown prog band." 

This takes me to how I feel about these modern bands. Being how this site seems to insist that these more song oriented bands are indeed prog and "crossover prog" is in fact still one hundred percent progressive rock, it has me reconsidering everything I thought I knew about prog. I now think that maybe a band doesn't have to be super complex or have the musicianship even of King Crimson or Mahavishnu Orchestra or Yes to be considered prog rock. As far as song length goes that is up to the bands discretion also and they don't have to do all(or even mostly) long songs to be prog. There can be other elements that still make it prog. This of course leads to the age old debate of "what is prog" and while there will probably be no end to that discussion among fans anytime soon at least we can all find music that is still adventurous in it's own way even if there aren't a million time changes or super long synthesizer instrumentals in them. As long as at least one person in the band has a copy of "close to the edge" or "tarkus" in their collection that just might be good enough for me. 

But I know what you mean, if you look at most bands promoted by Prog magazine, you'll get that impression.

A few days ago I stumbled across an old thread in which the term art rock was discussed. Apparently at some point it was used almost synonymously to prog by many. Progarchives had an art rock genre, and Crossover is one of the products of splitting it up (another is Eclectic). So art rock was always at home here. (I may make a fool of myself by explaining a forum past of which I wasn't part but some others who are still around... anyway this is what I gathered from what I read.)

Progarchives have Sparks and Steely Dan and others (many others under Prog Related such as Bowie, 10cc,...) who have always done mostly shorter songs.

By the way there's no problem doing complex and even crazily complex in 2 and a half minute. With many of the more complex newer (and some older) prog bands that do longer songs I sometimes think one could split these up into more shorter songs anyway as they start somewhere and end up in a completely different place.

What can hardly be done in a short song is patient development, meditative atmosphere etc.

Interesting discussion.  

Would anyone consider 1970s Barclay James Harvest to be a prog band...?   I ask because that band springs to mind given the criteria in the original post.  None of their songs were complex and many of them were quite short, neither was any of the musicianship particularly outstanding, but the quality of songwriting for the most part was superb. Their 1974 live album is still one of my favourites from that time and I would consider it to be classic prog. 

How about electronica like Tangerine dream or Jean Michel Jarre..?   Both have some superb albums tucked under their belts with long tracks being their speciality, but personally I wouldn't call them prog artists although some others might.  

Maybe as Exitthelemming states above and with complexity and track length notwithstanding there exists a largely undefinable quality which makes a band a prog band.  Personal opinion of the listener obviously plays a large part in it and one mans prog might easily be another mans classic rock or hard rock,  for example  Wishbone Ash : to my ear they're much more of a classic rock band, but they did have their proggier moments, and as with 'BJH Live' above, 'Live Dates'  is still one of my favourite albums from the era and in my own opinion one of the definitive live albums of the early 70s, but is it prog...?