By celebrating "The Underdog" or "failure" we are helping to keep something alive that would have otherwise been lost.
Most true artist/ musicians see their work as their children-they conceive them, bring them in to the world, help them take their first steps, pick them up when they fall and unconditionally love them-forever.
So when a bunch of nutters from England find one of these records (children) makes it big to a whole bunch of people in the UK /world and the word eventually spreads back to the artist in the USA-he can then dust off his "Creation" and say "We'll son you did me proud, at last 46 year old and you made it !!" and tell his friends and neighbours how he's BIG in England.
Otherwise its "Don't mention the record"-yes we celebrate "Failure" because the truth is The Yanks, in general, don't want to know about it, in any walk of life!
Rob