Amy Grant - Time Again: Amy Grant Live (Bonus Dvd)
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Music CD Cover Artist: Amy Grant Edition: Music CD CD Release Date: 2006-09-26 Music Label: Word Entertainment Soundtracks: Music CD 1
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Free Music Notes for Time Again: Amy Grant Live (Bonus Dvd) Album
Free Music Review: Helps to the fill the "void" of a recent live set in Amy Grant's portfolio
Hit: 4 Stars
Amy Grant may just be considered the greatest Christian Contemporary Artist in modern music history. She has both the commercial and critical success to back this up. It's hard to believe that Amy's career spans nearly 30 years. On top of achieving this success in the Christian Contemporary arena, Amy had a very successful "crossover" to the mainstream pop-music scene in the 1990s. Surprisingly, most of Amy's most successful material - in both the Christian and Pop arenas has not been on a live album. Yes, Amy released two albums very early in her career (1981's "In Concert" and "In Concert Volume 2"), but this did not contain the material that fans are most familiar with. It would be 25 years later when "Amy Grant - Time Again" would be released. This would be the long-awaited live album that would draw from her most successful material. Overall, this album while not perfect - does help to fill this one void in Amy's very successful career.
I can look at Amy Grant's career as encompassing three main phases. The first phase covers 1977 through 1981 (her debut self-title album "Amy Grant" through the "In Concert Volume 2"). In this phase, Amy definitely showed her youthful side (her first album was released while she still was in high school). For the most part, Amy did some nice songs and was able to establish herself as a Contemporary Christian Artist. In Phase 2 (this would cover 1982-1988, starting with "Age to Age" and going to this album "Amy Grant - The Collection"), Amy ascended to legendary status in the Contemporary Christian music-world both commercially and critically. This is where her husband to be Gary Chapman would begin to have an influence in her music. In this phase, Amy would show the most depth with her Christian music. When Phase 3 (1988 to present, starting with "Lead Me On" to present), Amy went into her full-fledged crossover into the mainstream (pop) music arena. 1981's "In Concert" albums do a great job at showing some of Amy's best live work from Phase 1 (in fact, many fans will find some really "hidden gems" in Amy's career on these albums). "Time Again" will focus more on her work from Phase 2 and Phase 3.
As mentioned, this collection does help to fill the void. It has its good points and weak points. Here are ten things to look from:
1.The collection draws its music from performances on April 11-12th, 2006. For the most part - there is something magical about hearing a great performance on a single night captured on a collection. For the most part, I find that when taking live songs from different concerts on different nights, the flow is disrupted. . However, this collection does a nice job at getting as close to creating a single night experience as possible.
2.The collection includes a CD and a "Bonus DVD". The "Bonus DVD" should not be confused with the separate full DVD release of "Time Again". It is important to know that not all of the songs from the April 11-12th shows are included on here. A more complete version is found on the full-length DVD. Songs such as "Carry You", "Lucky One", "Fathers Eyes", "El Shaddai", "Big Yellow Taxi", and "If These Walls Could Speak" are only included on the full DVD. "Lucky One" is also not on the CD, but is on the Bonus DVD. The band Rush released an identical CD copy to their DVD "Rush in Rio" - and it was a complete concert from a single night. I wish more artists would follow this lead.
3.The Bonus DVD didn't do a lot to sell me on the full DVD release. I found much of the camera work to flip too much between Amy and the band - breaking focus on the performance. There are split screens that are on "Stay For a While" and "Lucky One" which I also found to be very distracting and annoying.
4.The nice thing is the small venue that these performances were taken from. The performances were from Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. I think the intent of having an "intimate" live recording is successful. The Bonus DVD helps to demonstrate this visually. In addition, Amy has a strong band backing her up - and this helps Amy make the most of this setting.
5.There is a very interesting version of "Baby Baby". Amy does a country-spin on the song. I felt this spin in a live setting was actually a better version of the song.
6.The version of "Every Heartbeat" is outstanding. It is the best live cut from the collection - the only problem was it was too short.
7.One can make an argument that albums such as "Lead Me On" and "House of Love" are not well represented on the set list. However I think a more glaring omission is that there is no material from "Unguarded".
8.The set includes an Acoustic "unplugged" Set midway through the performance. This is typical with most live performances today. This helps enhance the "intimate" setting of the show.
9.I liked the inclusion of "Believe" - the theme song from Amy's reality show, "Three Wishes".
10.There is a solid new studio version of Amy's 1982 show, "In a Little While". This new studio version not only has more of a pop feel than the 1982 version, but it also reflects Amy's maturity as now a 40 plus year-old woman. You will also hear more guitar on this version.
The liner notes include acknowledgements from Amy herself and producer Steve Bishir. There are also musician and songwriting credits listed. Overall despite some of the weaker points of this collection, I don't think anyone can complain about the quality of the performance. This is one that should help fill the void of the lack of a live album from Amy Grant and should also appeal to the mainstream fan.