How Important are lyrics to you in Prog music

For myself personally, lyrics are like the icing on the cake. This of course means that the cake has to be good in the first place; with no substance, it's just an overly-sweet, sugary mess . In truth, it's really going to depend on the band/album.

Look at something like Trout Mask Replica; the lyrics here serve a very important purpose (IMHO) to those pieces as a whole. It's going to be highly subjective to each listener, though. You could argue it's the melody and delivery of the vocals themselves. If that's the case, you really could be saying just about anything, so long as it "wraps around and fits" the song accordingly. As someone who writes, my ears tend to gravitate towards and pay attention to what's being said - not just how it's being said.

With THAT being said, I'm a huge fan of Zappa-esque lyrical wackiness that may or may not have any deeper meaning at all .

 

That sums it up nicely for how I feel.

 

But take another favorite band of mine, like Opeth, I can't understand sh*t he's saying so i have no idea what his albums are about.  

Thats just me though, lyrical understanding  doesn't really enhance my musical experience.

SO basically, not really

 Personally I like reading and listening to well written lyrics and many of my favorite groups would be less interesting to me without them if they were only instrumental.

I would like to read an interview by some well known prog musicians on how they feel about the lyrics they and others write. Does anyone know of any interviews where known proggers talk about the lyrical aspects of their songs?

I gave you a comparison with the things that musicians put into a record that people don't notice or care about.  You haven't responded to that.  But therein lies the answer.  There are too many things happening on an album of music, far more than people give credit for and hence people zero in, subconsciously, on the things that really attract their attention.  And it is not even a rigid set of factors.  It is just a question of what stands out in a track.  

I don't think the point needs to be belaboured any further that lyrics stand out a lot less, if at all they do, in a prog epic than in a short rock song by a songwriter known for his/her lyrics (except in the case of particularly lyric centric bands like Marillion but they are NOT the norm).  That is the most plausible explanation for something that you seem to find strange - it is very easy to filter out something that only happens for a couple of minutes or so in a long track.  This is all the more so because a lot of prog rock singers aren't that spectacular to begin with; the Supersister guy for instance sounds just like a carbon copy of Sinclair and doesn't really add a whole lot that is interesting to their music.  I'd cite Derek Shulman as an example of a vocalist who is not by himself particularly fascinating; it's the intricate vocal arrangements (i.e. voice used as an instrument) that are fascinating in that band's music.  

If you feel you'd lose some of the attachment you have to your favourite prog rock groups if they went all instrumental, then perhaps there aren't that many instrumental bands altogether that you are fond of?  There's a lot of Canterbury that's either completely or predominantly instrumental and I love Canterbury.  So it may be that you find the indifference to lyrics on this board strange because your own tastes are a little different from that of a lot of prog rock fans.  For I find it hard to imagine that a hard core prog rock fan would not like all instrumental music of any kind.