The Most Influential

Confusion?  No, I don't think there is any confusion, neither from your side nor mine.  What I am quite sure of is you are pretty adept at shifting the goalposts as per your convenience.  If it's just influence you are interested in, I have already established that a few pages now.  I believe it was you who introduced the wrinkle that there are no Floyd-clones like Genesis-neo prog (I will come to this point a bit later).  And it was in this context I pointed out slabs of music that are very Floyd-like even in songs of bands that would not count Floyd as a dominant influence.  Er, I am afraid you first need to decide whether your original question was really one of sincere inquiry or are you just trying to manufacture arguments that 'help' you conclude that no influence is significant as long as the source is Floyd?

Anyhow, we'll start with Silent Lucidity.  First off, no, it's not a facsimile.  The song actually has metal riffs in the background during the spoken voice bit so that's not like Floyd at all.  And Tate's delivery is pure metal again, especially once he gets out of the low pitched intro.  A facsimile would have to be an exact or near exact facsimile.  You don’t have to take my word for it as far as the meaning of the word goes.  According to the Merriam Webster dictionary as well, facsimile is “an exact copy”.  You may shift goal posts if you wish (though that makes the discussion process much more difficult) but you cannot change the plain meaning of English words. 

Secondly, it has nothing to do with Kamen’s arrangements or Floyd’s recording tricks.  I cited the VOCAL MELODY of the opening verse, which is very similar in places to Mother.  As far as I know, note-similarity in vocal melodies cannot be attributed to arrangements or recording tricks.  I am also aware that the band as such is not strongly influenced by Floyd and, though Empire is a pretty boring album, I too do not recall any Floyd like moments in say Jet City Woman.  Here’s the thing.  Nearly everybody has heard a Floyd album at one point or the other.  With the result that there is a deeply embedded Floyd influence that creeps in at some point or the other in the work of many, many bands.  My friend is a prog rock musician and not a particularly big fan of Floyd though he does respect them and he has, by self admission, been influenced by Floyd in writing some guitar parts.  Prog rockers, I find, think influence is just structure or arrangements.  That is a very prog, and narrow, point of view.  There’s also the meat: the vocal melodies, the riffs, the chords, that is, the parts.  While Floyd may not have stuck to definite patterns in the way they develop music owing to their flexibility, there are definite patterns in their melodies, riffs and chords that Floyd fans can certainly recognise immediately as the signature of their band.  Some such Floyd fans, serious or casual, go on to become musicians and traces of Floyd can be found in their music.  To argue that such influence is insignificant would be disingenuous in the extreme because that would tantamount to saying that significant influence of Beatles is measured only by those bands that cloned them and not by those who were inspired by them to make music.  And by the way, to reiterate, Silent Lucidity is not a one off.  I can go on with many, many such examples of various bands from a variety of genres.  You may pretend that is not influence if it suits you, but I shall recognise it quickly for what it is: a pretence and no more.

Moving on to the question of what genres Floyd spawned, I think it would take a strong case of musical blindness to deny their role in the development of pyschedelic and space rock and, through their Barrett albums, on Krautrock as well.  Sure, they share that honour with Doors, Jefferson Airplane and to a lesser extent Beatles (Revolver), Hawkwind following a bit later.  It is not exclusive, but they are one of the most significant influences on a vast majority of bands in these genres.  And this is where I return to neo prog and Genesis.  I am quite familiar with Marillion, IQ and Twelfth Night, three of the most important neo prog bands.  None of these bands would count only Genesis as their source material.  Twelfth Night actually have a bit of NWOBHM (which can also be heard in Marillion’s Garden Party track) going on.  Marillion and IQ are both also influenced by Rush.  Pink Floyd also rears its ugly head again when it comes to Marillion and not just in the form of Gilmour leads.  The riffs of Brick in the Wall are evoked when guitar takes over in Assassing.  So the claim that each and every neo prog band is just a Genesis clone is mostly a figment of the fertile imagination of Genesis fanatics and little more. One Grendel does not a Genesis clone make.

Again, that was just one example with respect to Marillion. So don’t rush to pretend you’ve got to just refute that to negate the argument.  I cannot and will not spend time enumerating each and every such instance, so do not insult my intelligence.  As it is you who wish to claim that Floyd ‘s influence is not so significant, going against conventional wisdom which holds that Floyd is one of the most influential rock bands of all times, it is really up to you to explain why.  And if you don’t have any interest in doing so, that is your choice.  But in that case do remember that when you point fingers at people saying they only hear what they want to hear, three of your own point right back at you.  Such claims are neither very convincing nor very pleasant.  As far as I am concerned, Floyd's influence on music as a whole is far deeper than that of any prog rock band save Kraftwerk.  Um, Miles Davis isn't really a prog ROCK artist but yeah, him too.  And I would go so far as to state that only prog rock fans could possibly believe that is not the case.