Forgotten origins and remembered derivations are the way of the world since the dawn of humanity. Mithras forgotten as Christianity surrounds the world? Same thing. Monty Python, we know, but Flanders & Swann? Beyond the Fringe? The Goon Show? Vivian Stanshall?

Without understand the precursors and the contemporaries, one does not truly understand anything. The same is true in art and music and everything else I've encountered - it's all organic and the public has, as Steve Martin so rightly and memorably asserted before your time, a short attention span.