Bands Named for Places

Originally called the Chicago Transit Authority, they renamed themselves just Chicago a year later in 1969, when the actual Chicago Transit Authority asked them to stop using their name.  Led by Keyboardist Robert Lamm, Guitarist Terry Kath, Bassist Peter Cetera, all of whom also did lead vocals, and Arranger and Trombonist James Pankow, they did several successful albums.  Kath accidentally killed himself and Cetera has left the band, but they're still doing shows.

Boston is pretty much the creature of MIT grad student Tom Scholz, who invented a number of electronic gizmos and played all the instruments in a recording studio in his basement (In Watertown, Mass, which is across the river from Boston but not actually in it) to make the first album in 1974.  He got help from singer Brad Delp and added several others to do live shows.  Delp killed himself but Scholz and and many of his collaborators are still going.

Guitarist and Pianist Ralph Towner and Oboist Paul McCandless met while students at the University of Oregon, and with Sitarist and Tablaist Colin Wolcott and Bassist Glen Moore formed the group Oregon during the 1960s but didn't start calling themselves that until 1971.   Walcott was killed in a traffic accident, but the rest of the band is still going.

Progressive Rock band Kansas was formed in Topeka, Kansas in 1973, by a group of musicians who are mostly from Kansas.  They are still going although several of the original members, including the violinist/lead vocalist, have died.

Alabama is a country and rock band formed in Alabama in 1969.

America was formed by Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek and Gerry Beckley, all sons of US Air Force personnel, while their fathers were stationed near London, England.  Their music is light rock and roll, most of which is written by Bunnell.   Peek has died, but Bunnell and Beckley are still making music.

Nazareth is a Scottish band that was founded in 1968.  They took their name from Nazareth, PA, which is mentioned in the song "The Weight", by The Band.  The guitarmaker C.F. Martin is based there, as is the Andretti motor racing family.  The original Nazareth, in Israel, is also purportedly the home of Jesus although there are no references to it outside the New Testament prior to about 200AD.  It was at most a very tiny village when Jesus was there.  It became a bit of a tourist trap during the Crusades, and today it's one of the largest predominantly Muslim cities in Israel.

Berlin is an American New Wave band from Los Angeles, formed in 1978.  They have no known connection with the German Capitol.

Portishead is a British band formed in Bristol, which is a just a few miles east of the tiny town the band is named for.

The Manhattan Transfer is a vocal group that is named for a novel of that name, although the group actually is from New York City.  Some version of this group has been performing for more than 50 years although none of the originals is left.

The Bay City Rollers are a Boy Band from Edinburgh, Scotland, on the Firth of Forth, which is the estuary of the Forth River, and thus not actually a bay.  They're still making music, sort of, with a great many staffing changes.  I'm not sure I've actually ever heard one of their songs all the way through as I haven't been a teenager for 50 years and have never been a pre-teen girl.

My Prince Charles Story

 By the death of his mother, Prince Charles has been elevated to King Charles III of Great Britain.  I sort of met Charles in Oct 1977.  Here's the story:

My friend Joe Ito and I were playing frisbee on a lawn on the UC Berkeley campus just North of what was then called "Barrows Hall".  (it was recently "unnamed", because Barrows himself had been strongly racist, especially against indigenous people).   We saw a huge crowd of students headed for Barrows, much larger than any classroom could possibly hold.  Curious, we joined them and we soon found out that Prince Charles was coming for a visit.  Neither of us were particularly interested, but the crowd was so big that making our way against it would have been close to impossible.  Joe and I found a place on top of a stone retaining wall and under a covered walkway leading to the building.  We sat there for about 20 minutes until the Prince's entourage walked past.  Charles himself stopped right in front of us and began talking to Joe, asking him what his major was (philosophy), where he was from (El Cerrito, just a couple of miles north of Berkeley),  how he liked UC Berkeley (very much) and then walked on.  I was sitting squeezed up next to Joe is a big, dense crowd, so I heard everything and Charles definitely saw me.  After he moved on, a zillion people including a reporter for the student newspaper "The Daily Californian" asked Joe a zillion questions, mostly about why Charles had picked him (no idea).  Joe is (or was) a short, athletic, very Japanese looking fellow with thick glasses and straight black hair down to the middle of his back.  He was planning to go to law school, although at my suggestion, he took a computer programming class, did well in it, and became enamored with APL, so he might have changed directions.  We lost touch after graduation and I have no real idea what happened to him.  He was very smart though, so unless something awful happened to him, he probably was reasonably successful.  He resembles the judge in the OJ Simpson trial slightly, and that judge is about 5 years older than Joe, comes from Southern California, and is named Lance Ito.  Interestingly, he got his law degree at Berkeley's Boalt Hall about 2 years before Charles's visit, while Joe and I were both students there.  Law students don't interact much with the general student population at Cal, so it's unlikely either of us met him, but certainly not impossible.