#bones hillman

Over the last few days, there’s been several celebrity passings. Here is my combined remembrance of some of them:

Alex Trebek 1940-2020

Game show host Alex Trebek has died at age 80. He hosted Jeopardy! from 1984 to 2020. That game show was so iconic it was referenced in pop culture quite frequently with Trebek: Rain Main had to watch it wherever he was, Cliff Clavin was a guest in an episode of Cheers, Rosie Perez was a guest in White Men Can’t Jump, and in the episode of Seinfeld where George becomes a genius when he has to abstain from sex. SNL frequently did parodies of Jeopardy! with Will Farrell as Trebek and Trebek himself even appeared in some. Kinda cool that he had a sense of humor about himself.

Will Farrell as Trebek, Daryl Hammond as Sean Connery and Trebek on SNL

In 1995, my brother-in-law had a 3-night stand as a contestant on Jeopardy!. It was such a big deal for my family and my hometown, to see him on Jeopardy with Mr. Trebek hosting!

The link above is the obit from Variety.

Elsa Raven 1929-2020

Character actress Elsa Raven has died at age 91. Her greatest role was in Back to the Future as Clocktower Lady, who asks Marty to help “Save the Clock Tower”. She disrupts him with Jennifer, but it was integral to the plot for him to know about the clock tower in 1955 as the one way to get 1.21 gigawats to go back to the future.

Raven in BTTF

She also had roles in The Amityville Horror, Twilight Zone: The Movie, an episode of Family Ties, In the Line of Fire, the Mom and Pop Store episode of Seinfeld (she was Mom), Titanic, and many more.

The link above is the obit from Deadline.

Bones Hillman 1958-2020

Midnight Oil bassist Bones Hillman has died at 62. He joined the Australian alt-rock band in 1987 and was with them until 2020. I never got heavy into Midnight Oil, but always liked their stuff that I heard, including “Beds are Burning” (their biggest hit) and “Blue Sky Mine”. 

Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett and Bones Hillman

Although my blog is a Queen related blog, I’d like to make a humble homage to Midnight Oil’s bass player Bones Hillman who passed away yesterday. Such a grand Australian band! I was lucky to see them live in 2017. The Oils were the only one of my favourite bands still active and complete, having their 5 members still alive and working together (the problem we face when we like “old” bands: 50% on Earth/50% on heaven or away from the band). Now they are working on a new album for next year, having released a project last week. 

If you don’t know their work, I strongly recommend you to do so. It’s a pity people only know them for “Beds are Burning”, a radio hit, but they are much more than that. They recorded their first album in 78, and have always made great rock n roll plus intelligent, protest, political, historical, environmental, cultural, etc etc lyrics. A perfect combination of great energetic music and important issues being said without sounding dull. While you have fun, you learn a lot about their country, about world issues, about history. Their message makes you rethink and is always relevant. Nowadays more than never...

Bye Bones, the bassman with a sweet pretty voice.

Midnight Oil Bassist Bones Hillman Dies at 62

Midnight Oil’s Bones Hillman, “the bassist with the beautiful voice,” died Nov. 7 “after a cancer battle,” his bandmates said.

Hillman was 62.

“He was the bassist with the beautiful voice, the band member with the wicked sense of humor and our brilliant musical comrade,” the band said.

“ ... We will deeply miss our dear friend and companion.”

Hillman joined Midnight Oil in 1987 in time for Blue Sky Mining and remained through its just-released 12th LP, the Makarrata Project.

When the Oils were on hiatus, Hillman played and toured with Matthew Good, who remembered the bassist as “an amazing guy and musician,” and Elizabeth Cook.

“I will miss him greatly,” Good tweeted.

Hillman supported Cook on her Welder and Gospel Plow albums because “he’d decided he wanted to play upright bass with a country artist. I was the lucky winner,” she said.

“He was the big brother I didn’t know I needed,” Cook wrote in a lengthy Facebook post.

“My love to all deeply hurting over this loss,” she said. “What a gift. RIP, my sweet, sweet friend.”

she’s insane, living on a different plane spinning til she dizzy again just look at her go fizz pop whizz bang!