Places Everyone!

My brother writes to me with this thought: "Why do many American bands name themselves after the town or state they're from -- is this just an American thing or are there UK bands that do it too?"

A quick Google search reveals the sense that yes, this may be an American thing. The obvious examples are Boston, Chicago, Kansas (from Topeka), Alabama, even the MC5 (Motor City 5). And how about America, perhaps the most obvious one of all?

I tried to think of some UK bands that are named for their hometowns. Portishead are from Bristol but are named for a nearby town. Bush were named for the Shepherd's Bush section of London. Oasis took their name from a club in their hometown of Manchester. There's a punk band called London who came from -- you guessed it -- London. But the examples are far fewer. There's no Sunderland, Liverpool or Wolverhampton (although if there were, they'd probably sound like a cross between Wolf Parade and Peter Frampton.)

(More often, the English bands with place names only adopted the place names to differentiate themselves from American acts with the same name: The English Beat, The London Suede, The Charlatans UK. But those don't count -- they aren't the names the bands intended.)

Then there are the bands that take their names from places they're NOT from. The Manchester Orchestra aren't from Manchester but rather the Atlanta suburbs. And likewise the Bay City Rollers were from Scotland, not Michigan. Berlin came from Los Angeles.

So is this an American phenomenon? And what does it tell us? (Perhaps there's a shortage of creativity among these bands?) And what bands am I missing?