Rod BennetT
the short story…
The name “Tramendus Beats” is so fitting for the person it belongs to. Rod’s a large person and his sound and creative styling is as large as his persona. Formally known as “DJ Hot Rod” because when he put his hands to work on the turntables, the sweat was always pouring off his face. The name even stuck for a while after Bootsy Collins hired him as a member of Bootzilla Productions along with his best friend MC J.U.ICE. Rod was only 19 years old. Hot Rod worked along side of Bootsy for many years as a producer, engineer, artist development, and in the last years as A&R rep and artist management. Throughout the years of being involved with Bootzilla Productions, Hot Rod made many submissions to the numerous projects that were presented to Bootsy from movie soundtracks to theme songs for a cartoon character. There is a lot of subliminal work that Hot Rod was associated with while working for Bootsy.
Through this time “Tramendus Beats” was born. Tramendus Beats is a well developed producer of many types of music with experience with working at industry standards for 30 years. Rod is very knowledgeable about the function of today's music industry and operations, production and post production, management and artists development. Numerous artists have worked with Tramendus Beats and have come to a final professional product that is presentable to any music industry personnel.
The full story…
It all started though at a young age of 1 when Rod got the nickname “Beaty” for beating everything like a drum. At 5 years old his dad saw how much he loved to listen to records and had an interest in playing them himself. His father showing him how to properly hold the record, place it on the turntable, and put the needle on the groove. This is what led Hot Rod to become a future DJ.
Also at this same age, he started playing organ and viola at the Yamaha School of Music in New Jersey. Many instruments sparked his interest during high school including recorder, viola, drums, all percussion, saxophone, bass guitar, guitar, drum set, and any other instruments he picked up and sat with for 10 minutes. He always had a knack for figuring out how to play them. Around the the age of 13, Rod was already a fan of hip hop music, rock music, classical music, R&B and jazz music. Around this time, he was in the jazz band playing bass guitar at school and also playing percussion and saxophone in the concert band. Rod also played lead snare and timpani while competing internationally with this same concert band.
In his after school life, he was in a rock band playing bass guitar. Rod then moved to Western New York with his family and continued to play in the school concert band. During this time he found a new band of his own to show off his drum skills. Again this was a rock band, but also at the same time he was in the beginning stages of hip hop and rock production. Rod started DJing and mimicking hip-hop DJ'S from records that were popular. It came easily to Rod because of the musical training he had and his love and knowledge of music.
The rock band was playing out regularly and recorded songs in a local studio. This sparked Rod to create some hip-hop original musical compositions and incorporated the lyrical genius of his friend Darryl where they formulated “The Awesome Force”. The Awesome Force made many radio appearances, did many stage performances, and ended up in the presence of Bootsy Collins when they relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio. This is where Rod wanted to be and this was the start of his professional music career. Many years of musical work with Bootzilla Productions lead up to the birth of Tramendus Beats Productions. Tramendus Beats Productions is on the next level of his musical journey looking forward to working with the newest and the next best artists to come.