The Best Trip Ever

This morning I woke up early thinking that I needed to build an iPod playlist of French (or at least sort of Frenchy) music for Paris. I've never built a playlist before, since my iPod has mainly been used for books to make the time go by on the elliptical trainer and music to put me to sleep on airplanes.

After a day of sorting through our CDs and discovering just how easy it is to buy music on Amazon, I've narrrowed it down to several albums and a few stray songs.

We already have lots of gypsy swing music. The original Django recordings don't please me as much as the same songs by The Quintet of the Hot Club of San Francisco and Pearl Django, probably a matter of recording quality. We also have several Stephane Grappelli CDs and a Toots Thielemans CD that I love. I debated whether it was legal to add Diana Krall "Live in Paris" and Oscar Peterson "Oscar in Paris: Live at the Salle Pleyel," and finally realized that it was MY playlist so I could do what I wanted. They're in.

I found a compilation CD called "Rendevous a Paris" in our collection that included one song by Keren Ann, which at least momentarily has saved me from downloading one or more of her albums. I bought and downloaded albums by Paris Combo and Pink Martini. I also added a few odds and ends like a Julie Delpy song from "Before Sunset" and my favorite Sally Potter/Yo Yo Ma song from "The Tango Lesson."

I'm not finished yet. I may add more, and I think I probably have to cull this down to my favorite songs from each source. But it's a start, and I'm one day closer to Paris!