🎄 Holidays! Seasonal Album: Amy Grant HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

What is your favorite track?

  • Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

    Votes: 2 11.8%
  • Joy To The World / For Unto Us A Child Is Born

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Breath of Heaven (Mary's Song)

    Votes: 5 29.4%
  • O Come All Ye Faithful

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Grown-up Christmas List

    Votes: 2 11.8%
  • Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

    Votes: 2 11.8%
  • Winter Wonderland

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • I'll Be Home For Christmas

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • The Night Before Christmas

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Emmanuel, God With Us

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Total voters
    17
'HAVE A HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS' -- by Pete Jolly

'WE AND THE TREE' -- Tamba 4

'FOOLIN' AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE' -- Chris Montez

'THE REINDEER BOOK' --- Renee Armand

'HEADS UP THE CHIMNEY' --- Baja Marimba Band
 
Rudy said:
There are three Very Special Xmas albums that I know of...

A Very Special Christmas 7 was just released last month.

I have the first three. I like the first two quite a bit, although they are both pretty hit and miss as far as the tracks. The second volume is definitely my favorite. I never cared much at all for the third one. I knew there had been a few more in the series but didn't realize it was up to number seven until I saw it in with the "new releases" a few weeks back.

The best cuts (in my opinion) are:

Volume One: Winter Wonderland (Eurythmics), Santa Baby (Madonna), Silent Night (Stevie Nicks)

Volume Two: Jingle Bell Rock (Randy Travis), Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (Frank Sinatra & Cyndi Lauper), Sleigh Ride (Debbie Gibson), What Child Is This? (Vanessa Williams), Silent Night (Wilson Phillips)
 
Amy actually did another Christmas album- a duet project with Art Garfunkel called "The Animal's Christmas". It was after her first Christmas project. Its out of print and hard to find but worth it.

HOME FOR CHRISTMAS is my favorite of all of them. Love Amy- always have, probably always will. An old A&M exec told me she was one of the nicest people he had ever met.

Wish the Carps had recorded as many Christmas projects as Amy!
 
Just imagine the scenario of Karen and Richard recording some of Amy's songs...

Grown-up Christmas List
Breath Of Heaven
Emmanuel, God With Us

Not that Amy's recordings aren't excellent - but just imagine a Carpenters take on them.

Harry
 
^^ I love those songs. I think GUCL probably would have brought me to tears upon first listen...
 
I have all three Amy Grant's Christmas albums on CD on the A&M label. I was fortunate enough to buy the special edition of a Christmas to Remember from Target (when Amy was their spokesperson). One wonders why they didn't just add Merry Christmas Darling on for later re-releases. I saw Amy,Michael W. Smith, Point of Grace and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra at Phillips Arena in Atlanta for her very popular Christmas concert in 1999, I believe. It was wonderful. I actually like her version of Mr. Santa. She told a great story of the song at her concert. Her Christmas concert used to be in Nashville only and now she alternates which cities get her Christmas concert. Nashville still gets her Christmas concerts each year (two nights I think). If you ever get a chance to purchase tickets for this concert don't pass up the opportunity.
 
My thanks to Chis-an-ordinary-fool for alerting me this year to a long-lost, sort-of thirteenth track to Amy grant's HOME FOR CHRISTMAS album. It seems that in 1992, when the album was first released, A&M issued a special extra single on cassette to purchasers at Target stores. Called "Let The Season Take Wing", the song has never managed to resurface on any of Amy's subsequent releases, so it's a sort-of forgotten track except to those who managed to get it and rescue it from the cassette format.

Like so many other forgotten tracks, this one's found it's way to YouTube, so you too can get a chance to listen to it.



Several things about this track grab me. First is its waltz time. I'm a sucker for many songs in 3/4 or 6/8 time. Something about those time signatures gets to me. Second is the soaring key change before the final chorus. That's always a goose-bump inducer for me.

Good stuff - and thanks, Chris for pointing me toward this track. It'll be a perennial favorite every Christmas season from now on.

Harry
 
It's a great song. I don't listen to alot of radio but when Christmas arrives we have some stations locally that play lots of Christmas music and one that plays it 24/7 starting after thanksgiving. I noticed that Amy gets alot of airplay, I hear her songs alot from the several Christmas albums she has put out. She has that sound, much like the Carpenters, that just makes the holidays seem brighter and hope in song.
 
Well, it's taken two years, but I finally spotted this cassette single on eBay and grabbed it. It's been a bit of a lucky season, finding the Herb triple colored 12" set, and now the Amy Grant cassette from Target.

Harry
 
"Rosie Vela Goes Home For The Holidays with Steely Dan"...

I didn't think Rosie was that kind of girl. :shock: (Knowing the origin of the term "Steely Dan"...)

“Steely Dan III from Yokohama,” she says, caressing the......
.......
“And Steely Dan II?”
“Chewed to bits by a famished canidru in the Upper Baboonsa--hole. And don’t say ‘wheeeeeeee!’ this time.”


Can't quote the full passage from Naked Lunch here... :shh:
 
Well, it's taken two years, but I finally spotted this cassette single on eBay and grabbed it. It's been a bit of a lucky season, finding the Herb triple colored 12" set, and now the Amy Grant cassette from Target.

Harry

That's pretty rare to find it after all these years. I'm not sure I have ever seen one on ebay for sale. The single must still have some rights/ties to Target in that she can't re-release it on any of her own albums. It's such a great track and odd it's never surfaced except on cassette. I wonder if your cassette sounds any better than mine?
 
I was very happy to get that Amy Grant "Let The Season Take Wing" cassette in the mail. I've been playing around with different Dolby settings and Audacity and have come up with a pretty good-sounding version. It's still got a hint of that "cassette sound", but it's less muddy than a straight Dolby B setting.

Meanwhile, as we're close to Disney, we opted to go over to EPCOT to see Amy Grant narrate their Christmas Candlelight Processional. As it turned out, last night was the last night for that, and we saw the last performance. Actually, while standing in line, we got close enough to see and hear some of the earlier show. My zoom lens on telephoto setting managed to pick up this image:

IMG_0442.JPG

Finally we were seated for the 8:15 show. Here's a more straight-on shot of Amy narrating:

IMG_0452.JPG

And a final image as the show concluded:

IMG_0456smaller.jpg

For those who've never seen the Candlelight Processional, the guest-star narrator is just that - a narrator of the story of the Nativity. Until seeing Amy Grant up there, I've never seen another narrator actually sing along. She didn't do it a lot, but I caught her joining in on a verso of "Joy To The World." I think, like so many in the audience, she just couldn't help herself!

Harry
 
Very cool, sounds like a very festive time and a great way to end the season. I would have loved to attend this event, I need to remember this for next year. I'm surprised that she didn't sing a solo song given with the full orchestra present.
 
It's actually interesting that A&M didn't release more Christmas albums through the years.....after all, Herb's album did well, as did the various Carpenters releases, this Amy album did very well, the Very Special charity albums made a lot of noise (literally!), especially the first volume -- plus I'd have to think that during the time they distributed Myrrh, the various other Amy/Michael W. Smith/etc. albums were good to them too.
 
It's actually interesting that A&M didn't release more Christmas albums through the years.....after all, Herb's album did well, as did the various Carpenters releases, this Amy album did very well, the Very Special charity albums made a lot of noise (literally!), especially the first volume -- plus I'd have to think that during the time they distributed Myrrh, the various other Amy/Michael W. Smith/etc. albums were good to them too.

Even if you add in the compilation albums (Something Festive and one or two offshoots of that), you're right--there aren't that many.
 
Of Amy Grant's 3 Christmas albums, this one, "Home For Christmas" is my favorite. Safe? Yes. Polished? Yes. It's my second favorite Christmas Album right behind Carpenters Christmas Portrait.
 
One song from Amy Grant's "Home For Christmas", "Breath of Heaven", written by Amy Grant, was recorded by Donna Summer for her "Christmas Spirit" album.
 
I'm re-opening this thread to add my thoughts on the new vinyl issue of Amy Grant's HOME FOR CHRISTMAS. I managed to get a copy of the special green clear vinyl that they sold at Cracker Barrel this year. HOME FOR CHRISTMAS was first released in the CD age and never got a vinyl release back then and has gotten its first "pressing" this year, both as an individual album and as part of a 3-LP Christmas set.

First, I want to note some of the differences, mostly in packaging, and this is all nitty-gritty stuff. The HOME FOR CHRISTMAS artwork on the new LP does a decent job of porting the information over from the CD, with a few exceptions. The biggest omission is that the LP has no printed lyrics. Some have complained that the cover artwork is a little blurry, but that's surely because it had to be blown up from its designed CD size. Much of the CDs booklet text has been placed on the innersleeve of the record, and I notice some interesting changes in the fonts used.

As good as HOME FOR CHRISTMAS is as an album, the original CD artwork text isn't as readable as it could be. There'a a lot of use of a script, handwriting-type font for song titles, and at the tiny size of a CD, they're tough to read - especially as we age. I almost think that that part of the artwork may have been originally meant for a 12" LP, but they had stopped pressing them by then. Interestingly, the script font used on the CD is not exactly the same as the script font used on the LP.

And in some cases, they simplified some of the fonts used. Amy's notes for the album on the CD are found in a tiny, near-unreadable script font next to the credits on the second internal page of the booklet, under her small picture. These same notes are printed in a much-bigger script font on the innersleeve of the album. Until I listened to the LP, I'd never read those notes, and they're quite nice. So the bottom line is that each "size" of the album has its good and bad points. CD versions have timings on the tracks, but that info is not anywhere on the LP package.

On a positive note, the LP sounds pretty good to my ears. It has a nice warm sound and is pressed pretty well. I noticed a slight off-center "wow" to the second side, but it's hardly noticeable by most I suspect. And this is naturally the first time I ever had to get up and flip sides on this album!

Reading back through this thread that started over a decade ago, there were three Amy Grant Christmas albums and all of them had pressings from A&M. As I dug into Amy's back catalog, I made an effort to seek out the A&M CD pressings as they were recommended by a superfan over on the Hoffman site, as later pressings were all victims of loudness wars.
 
I love this album! And I would have loved to see Amy at Epcot for the Candlelight Processional. Ex A&M er Jon Konjoyan told me once that she was one of the nicest people he had ever met.
 
It's been a few years since Amy did the Candlelight Processional. I'm not 100% sure why, but I have a theory that it has to do with Disney removing and replacing a certain few lines of the text about that "one solitary life".
 
That's too bad! I'm all for people celebrating the holidays as they wish, but please don't change the original meaning of the season.
 
That's too bad! I'm all for people celebrating the holidays as they wish, but please don't change the original meaning of the season.
Sadly, things have gotten so polarized and PC in this society of ours that many of us just can't have nice things anymore without being judged or having them taken away from us. Hey, I'll even admit there might be certain things in life I don't like myself, but I'm not about to deny others their enjoyment or decide what they can or cannot enjoy or take part in. We all come from different cultures and backgrounds. My friend's office won't even let them have a Christmas party--they have to call it an End of Year Party. It's pathetic. It's sad to see major corporations cave to PC demands from the vocal 0.1% who can't keep their nose out of others' business.

I just see the entire last two weeks of each year as being a festive time and enjoy it with friends and family, and the holidays themselves are just the anchors for all of it. I like hearing about everyone's customs! There are so many ways to celebrate. (Some would say that all these different international holidays and customs are just an excuse for me to pour another cocktail in their honor. They may be right! 😁) I've always said "Happy Holidays" as an adult, not for PC reasons, but because I totally dig all the different customs around this time of year and I like to honor them all. If you rock out Hannukah rather than Christmas, or Kwanzaa is your thing? Faaantastic! My greetings gotcha covered! 👍👍

Oh...and Happy Boxing Day! :laugh:
 
Back
Top Bottom