Bones Hillman, who joined Midnight Oil following the recording of its breakthrough album Diesel and Dust and who is described by the band as “the bassist with the beautiful voice,” died on Saturday after a battle with cancer, the group announced on social media. He was 62.
Midnight Oil is planning to release not one but two new musical projects this year, beginning with an eight-song mini-album called The Makaratta Project recorded with “some of our First Nations friends” to be released this summer, followed by a proper Oils studio album due out later in the year, according to the band’s website.
Midnight Oil formally opened its Great Circle 2017 World Tour in Sydney on Thursday night, playing a 29-song set that balanced the reunited band’s best-known hits with the unexpected — including a near-complete performance of 1978’s Head Injuries. See the full setlist and some fan-shot video.
Midnight Oil this month will release for the first time remastered CDs of the band’s full catalog from 1978 to 1993 — the group’s first eight full-length albums, plus two EPs — and also will finally issue its 1990 VHS release “Black Rain Falls” on DVD and digitally.
This week’s new releases include CD “vinyl replica” reissues from Midnight Oil and Iggy Pop, plus a first-time vinyl release of Grant Hart’s 1999 solo album ‘Good News for Modern Man’ and a live-in-the-studio set from Lone Justice recorded in 1983.
With BP’s disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil leak now surpassing the Exxon Valdez as the worst oil spill in U.S. history, it’s only fitting that we mark Sunday’s 20th anniversary of the Midnight Oil ‘guerrilla action’ in front of the Exxon building in New York City.
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