I was never a sports fan growing up. (Unless Super Mario counts as a sport? No? Moving on.) But over the years, even I’ve learned there is strict etiquette to be respected around supporting your hometown team. To oversimplify:

1. you don’t necessarily have to support your home team, but if you choose another team, you must be able to give a good reason;
2. only under the most dire of circumstances may you support your home team’s historical rival (by “most dire” we mean: your parents are from the rival town; there’s a gun to your head; your parents are the ones holding the gun to your head; etc.);
3. at the end of the season, if a championship’s on the line, you get out there cheer with your neighbors. (Go Giants!)

In the world of music, however, the etiquette is murkier. I know plenty of fans who feel strong loyalty towards bands from their hometown; but I also know plenty, especially nowadays, who couldn’t even tell you what country an artist might be from. (Although those rumors that I didn’t realize Black Sabbath was British until I was in college are entirely false.) As we’ve discussed before, plenty of music acts get discovered through the magic of Youtube and Pandora rather than by connecting with fans through through local gigs. Some folks may even be turned off by local bands that manage to hit the national charts, although let’s not get into the question of what constitutes “selling out” — this space is not equipped to handle metaphysical questions. So do bands get a hometown advantage?

To find out, we looked at bands from ten metropolitan areas, and compared their SonicLiving fan base in their hometown to their fan base everywhere else. For data geeks, that’s ([fans from hometown/all users from hometown] – [{fans nationally - fans from hometown}/{users nationally - users from hometown}). And it looks like the hometown advantage may be real, but tiny:

every little bit helps

At best, in the cities we examined, bands are garnering a little less than 2% more fans than they are nationally. This isn’t conclusive, since not all cities are represented — it’s possible that the cities we chose happen to be more or less loyal than usual. But since we don’t have enough data to run this comparison for all cities, it’s a place to start.

What about on a band level? What bands are getting the most hometown love?

1. John Mayer, Atlanta – 10.51% more fans in his hometown
2. Blue Scholars, Seattle – 10.11% more fans in their hometown
3. Ghostland Observatory, Austin – 9.90% more fans in their hometown
4. Death Cab for Cutie, Seattle – 9.40% more fans in their hometown
5. Bob Schneider, Austin – 9.06% more fans in his hometown
6. Jay-Z, New York – 8.86% more fans in his hometown
7. Bob Dynycn, New York – 8.70% more fans in his hometown
8. The Roots, Philadelphia – 8.65% more fans in their hometown
9. Dropkick Murphys, Boston – 8.10% more fans in their hometown
10. Guster, Boston – 8.01% more fans in their hometown

And the least? Here are ten bands who actually have a smaller percentage of fans in their hometown than they do nationally (also known as the “big in Japan” effect).

Do a band’s roots matter to you, or just their music? Let us know in the comments.

Somewhere between “original recording artist” and “karaoke aficionado” lies the shadowy world of tribute bands — bands entirely devoted to imitating someone else, sometimes right down to the details of costumes and makeup. Unfamiliar with the concept? Think Elvis impersonator, except not just for Elvis, and actually performing songs rather than just pelvis-wiggling. (Not that we have anything against pelvis-wiggling, in moderation. Why hello there, Elvis impersonation community; have I mentioned how much we value your contribution to society?)

Obviously it takes more than just ordinary fandom to merit the tribute band treatment — all those rehearsals and costumes represent a serious commitment. So you might think only the biggest of acts would be tribute-worthy. But we at SonicLiving get nosy about these things, so we thought we’d do a little digging. We counted all the tribute bands we could find in our own database, plus any others who turned up on Google, Yahoo, or sites like Tribute City.

A few caveats for data nerds: first, we actually excluded Elvis, since figuring out who was a real tribute musician and who was just working at a drive-through chapel in Vegas turned out to be too tricky; second, we excluded Broadway-style musicals like this one; and third, there may still be some bands that didn’t show up online.

Herewith, I give you the ten artists with the most . . . tributaries? Tributeers? We may need some new vocabulary here.

Surprised? There isn’t a whole lot of crossover between those bands and the Billboard top artists. But it looks like there are some other patterns; this top ten skews heavily (har har) towards heavy metal, and also towards bands founded in the 1970s. Let’s take a look and see if those patterns persist beyond the top ten:

Heavy metal, rock, and hard rock account for fully half of the tribute bands we found. That’s a lotta guitar solos. And look at what happens if we count our tributes by the year the original band was founded:

So why might guitar-heavy bands from the classic rock era be better tribute material than other bands? We’re leaving the realm of data and entering the realm of speculation, but here’s a couple of theories. First, a lot of folks know how to play the guitar, and learned on those very songs. And second, to make a tribute band work, both the band members and their audience have to be old enough to go to a show, which might present a challenge to some of the tween-fueled acts of today. So who knows? Maybe as time goes on, the current top artists will gather more tribute mojo.

But maybe there’s something else at work. Perhaps the real inspiration behind tributes is which band names are easy to spoof.  Speaking of which, here are some of our favorite tribute names, and their inspiration:

So now you know. Also, holler if you want to join my new tribute band. I’m thinking of naming it “The Who Tang Clan”.