Web surf # 1…from Grant-Lee Phillips to Back to the Future

Web surf # 1…from Grant-Lee Phillips to Back to the Future   

Courthouse Square

I was listening in the car to FM Radio on the low end of the dial where all the public radio stations are-and came upon a folk-rock song with vocals that sounded a little like Bono.  The DJ didn’t say what the song was –and so when I went home, I tried to figure it out.  I had trouble googling the lyrics because I hadn’t been able to  make out the words to well.  All I could remember was “She is a lily” or “She is like lily”.  So I tried figuring which radio station I had been listening to –it turned out to be WUMB and then I looked on their website to see if they had a playlist-they did. 

The song was called  “Lily-a-passion” by Grant- Lee Phillips.  It’s an original song  available on a solo album of his called Virginia Creeper.  So what’s a “Lily–a-passion”? I don’t know, maybe Grant is referring to the flower called the Passion Lily.  Yes indeed so here's the video for that song -assuming it' working at the time you read this 

I had vaguely remembered an act called  Grant Lee Buffalo-and that it  had some sort of connection with Husker Du. The connection turned out that Grant Hart , one the  members of Husker Du also had the first name Grant, and that another Husker-Du-er , Bob Mould , had helped release one of Grant Lee Buffalo's  recordings . I eventually figured out that Grant Lee Buffalo had disbanded and that Phillips  now went by the Grant-Lee Phillips moniker and that   he was a recurring character on the Gilmore Girls TV show-where he played  a troubadour who sang songs in the town square on the show.  There is a  video that compiled Grant's appearances on the Gilmore Girls on YouTube (see below).

The town square on the video looked familiar-and I thought to myself that it was the same town square that was used for  the Back to the Future movies. Well I was correct , the location was a back lot called Courthouse Square which is movie set for Universal Studios. Somehow from there I looked up the Back to the Future movies and learned that Eric Stoltz (of Mask fame) was the original Marty McFly.  Five  weeks into the shooting of the film, director,  Robert Zemekis recast McFly because Eric Stoltz wasn’t funny enough.  Michael J. Fox took over the role and the rest is history and future history.  I was also reminded that the second and third Back to the Future movies were shot  back to back-one of the earliest set of  big budget films  to be filmed in tandem, so as to save production costs.

Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly. Eric with dark hair-that's wrong right there!