Hot RS
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Part 1)
The Garden Of Eden
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Part 2)
Hot RS was a South African disco act. Their name is a bizarre abbreviation of “House Of The Rising Sun,” a disco cover of which also served as their first single. Like many other disco acts of the late-70s (including some I’ve already covered), they focused on long-form tracks primarily. Their first album had just three songs; their cover of “House Of The Rising Sun” took up the entirety of side A, which two additional seven-minute tracks making up the B-side.
Forbidden Fruit has a few more tracks on it, six in total to be precise. Many bleed together like a medley, all are thematically-tied to the story of The Garden Of Eden, making Forbidden Fruit a disco concept album, which is a real rarity.
The B-side is kind of throwaway though, the real stand out is, obviously, that massive cover of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” which also features an interlude cover of the unrelated oldie “The Garden of Eden.” It is shocking how well this song works as a disco track. They even manage to fit in a little bit of the drum solo and somehow make that work. A lot of it has to do with the song’s reliance on sequencers, they help to move things along, as well as some damn decent guitar work.
From what I can gather about Hot RS, that damn decent guitar work came from one Trevor Rabin, who you may know from his work with 80s Yes and about a billion film scores. According to what I’ve read on the internet about this group, he served as a session musician for Hot RS. Although I do have to say that I really can’t confirm that, as my copy of the album came with nothing in the way of liner notes.
The main members of Hot RS were Kevin Kruger and Dan Hill, with Kruger being the songwriter on a few of their tracks that weren’t covers (their weaker material, to be honest). Kruger was also a percussionist and he went on to work with Rabin on a few of his solo records. He also worked with Rabin on Disco Rock Machine, a group that was similar to Hot RS for taking rock tracks and transforming them into electronic disco tunes (I must own their records).
Dan Hill’s career goes a bit deeper though. He started as a jazz musician, and scored hits as early as 1958. In the late 60s and into the 70s he had several more hits with albums comprised of jazzy covers of hit pop tunes. (I suspect the incredibly risque covers no doubt help that.) As the 70s moved on, I think those got more and more electric in nature, one even name drops the Korg in the title. His last credited appearance on an album was in the early 90s, but apparently he kept on playing live until right before he passed away in 2009. Literally every article I found on him calls him a “music legend.” So I guess he was kind of a big deal in his home country.
Like I said, I fucking love this. If you didn’t latch on to my last disco upload, I really can’t blame you, that record was more of a curiosity than legitimately good. But this is just utterly captivating. Equal parts cheese and quality for me. And “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” is just such a classic tune anyway, it’s fun to see it re-worked into a different genre, and with other material that fits the lyrics of the track. Call it stupid, call it dated, call it corny, but don’t call it lazy; they put some effort into this one. This is a well-made, well-produced record by people who knew what the hell they were doing. A very good use of sequencers and other electronic instruments in a pop environment, which were all still kind of a new thing at the time.
And holy shit that cover.