Why is prog rock always called "snooty"?

It is probably also important that the attitude of some of the prog audience (and maybe some musicians) had changed. Or rather maybe there were various kinds of prog audience from the beginning. The end 60s and in countries that were a bit behind the early 70s were in some sense like the beginning of punk; it was a liberating and encouraging climate for everyone who wanted to play music. Take the beginnings of Amon Düül. In the beginning it was just, let's play some music, try whatever instrument you want, no skill, education and knowledge necessary. Amon Düül I's albums are all like this. Amon Düül II became more ambitious and later some of their musicians became very good, but on the Phallus Dei album they're still very pedestrian. Their beginning is the same though, spontaneous jamming out of the desire to do music and listening experience, no other background. Surely other bands that are listed here have a similar story. And the audience went with it. It was spontaneous and fun. By the way, legendary German proto-punk band Ton Steine Scherben was founded in 1970 and belonged to that same culture initially, and later became punk icons in Germany. As somebody wrote before, prog was rebellion. Later in the 70s a larger part of the prog audience went for admiring skill and complexity and part of them looked down on music that didn't have that. Probably these people looked down on early Amon Düül as well. I love a great deal of prog from later in the seventies and even early eighties, but it was pretty clear that in this way some of the prog culture had lost touch with the rebellious sentiment of the next generation. The issue is not how good some of the prog virtuosos were and that it was hard to get at their level, the issue was rather that many of those who were still proggers looked down on who didn't want to go that way. And I actually think that one thing the music press got right was to part company with these people.