"Get It While You Can" (sung by guest Graham Parker) or synth-driven "You Mix Me Up" with misjudged female backing vocals. Too many songs are generic 80's hard rock, e.g. The second BoF album has a bigger sonic variety but is generally considered to be inferior despite the impressive guest list. Rory Gallagher takes over guitar duties for the hard rock "The Edge" and ballad "Into The Dark", where he also contributes slide guitar and sitar - talk about East meets West! "Just A Boy Again" has a folkier Americana sound, like a hybrid between Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac. " Two Steps Ahead" and " Poor Boy" are bluesy hard rock a la Bad Company with stellar guitar work by Jeff Beck. "Another Wasted Day" is an excellent mid-tempo boogie with an understated vocal that reminds me of Mark Knopfler. " Harder" is a commercial hard rocker with Ray Majors on guitar (Fiddler's former bandmate in British Lions). It was the band's biggest hit, cracking the Top Ten in the U.S.
Opener "Back Where I Started" is the perfect introduction, a rolling boogie with great bluesy vocal and harmonica, smoking guitar courtesy of Jeff Beck and backing vocals reminiscent of The Yardbirds' heyday. So I guess the question is: can you still listen to 80's mainstream rock? How cool are you with the sounds of Foreigner, Aerosmith, Status Quo and ZZ Top from that era? Well, if you can get past the dated production values, there's much to like in BoF's debut. The style is rootsy hard rock but the synthetic 80's production neutered their sound somewhat, making it sound like any other record of the period. The eponymous debut featured guest guitarists Jeff Beck and Rory Gallagher, ensuring some top-notch playing, while all the songs are original group compositions. Singer Keith Relf had regrettably died only a few years before (electrocuted by his own guitar) so the rest of the band (Chris Dreja, Paul Samwell-Smith and Jim McCarty) added the very good singer John Fiddler (former Medicine Head) and reformed the band under a new name. It turned out to be a bad idea, even more so because Box Of Frogs were actually famous in the 60's with the name The Yardbirds. Yes, I'm talking about the group that nurtured Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. So probably the expression means crazy like that band was for choosing such a ridiculous name. Nobody has heard the expression before the 2000's. I searched and searched the language sites on the internet (you may argue that I've too much time on my hands, but once my curiosity is aroused I can't leave a question unanswered). Why would anyone fill a box with frogs? But, by all accounts, the band seems to predate the expression. Apparently there's a British expression I hadn't heard before: mad as a box of frogs, which certainly sounds like a crazy idea. I remember seeing the original Box Of Frogs LP in the shops and passing it by immediately because of the album cover and ridiculous band name.
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