City Boy

During an era dominated by punk rock and new wave on the charts, the Birmingham, England-based five-piece City Boy crafted melodic progressive rock songs packed with hooks. Although two tracks—"5--7--0--5" and the title song from their 1979 album, "The Day the Earth Caught Fire"—reached the British Top Ten, the group could not build on that momentum and called it quits in 1981. The Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock later highlighted City Boy's "strong identification with progressive rock and funk-oriented tracks." The band's roots trace to the early 1960s, when prep-school classmates Steve Broughton and Lol Mason first teamed up as lead vocalists. In 1964 Mason struck up a friendship with 12-string guitarist and bongo player Max Thomas; two years afterward, the trio recorded an acoustic album before leaving school to write original material together. Thomas soon departed for Suffolk University and contact lapsed until 1969, by which time he had endured multiple nervous breakdowns and was a patient in a hospital psychiatric ward. Broughton, Mason, and acoustic guitarist Chris began collecting him each evening for jam sessions. Performing as the acoustic outfit "Back-in-the-Band," they appeared regularly at the folk venue The Cherry Trees. The ensemble, now renamed City Boy, secured a Vertigo contract in 1973 on condition that electric guitarist Mike Slamer and drummer Roger Kent be added. Their debut album, Mark I, appeared three years later; the first single, "Hap-Ki-Do," climbed to number 32 on the British charts. Roy Ward replaced Kent in 1978, just before the band launched a four-month U.S. tour supporting Hall and Oates. Although Atlantic took the group for American and Canadian distribution, City Boy's run was essentially finished. After relocating to New York State, the lineup fractured when Broughton and Chris exited. The remaining members issued one final single on their own City Boy imprint in 1982 before dissolving.