What's Kozmik Landing been up to lately? OR How to beat the big C and still be a kick arse rock chick singer in a killer band!!

Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.

Today we share a zoom room chat I had recently with Kozmik Landing, retro rock and blues band from Adelaide, who are mix of Janis Joplin and Led Zepellin.

Vena Cartledge vocals, Rob Cartledge guitar and keys, Neil Williams drums and Bill Carapetis bass, play the music of the 70s, considered by many to be the golden age of rock music, and are a must see band for any rock enthusiast.

AND they’re headed our way  very soon.

Includes Songs:

Kozmik Landing - Distant Land
Kozmik Landing - Wanderer
Janis Joplin - Me and Bobby McGee
Kozmik Landing - Wretched Soul

What have Kozmik Landing been up to lately … let’s find out! 

Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!

Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:06

that radio chick, cheryl lee, here with you. Welcome to the still rocking it podcast, where we'll have music news, reviews and interviews with some of our favorite australian musicians and artists. Today we share a zoom room chat I had recently with Cosmic Landing retro rock and blues band from Adelaide, who are a mix of Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin. Vena Cartlidge vocals, rob Cartlidge guitar and keys, neil Williams drums and Bill Karapetus bass play the music of the 70s considered by many to be the golden age of rock music and are a must-see band for any rock enthusiast. What are Cosmic Landing up to? Lately? Let's find out. Hello, beautiful people, you're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you very much for joining me today. Veena, robert, and who else have we got? Oh, bill, hi, bill.

Speaker 3: 1:03

Hi Cheryl.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Hi Cheryl, hi Cheryl Thank you so much for making some time in your busy schedule to have a chat with me today. I know you have been being interviewed by my friends today, wasn't it? Yes?

Speaker 1: 1:17

At Mega Music TV. How did that go? It went really well. They just left about an hour ago. That was Mega Music TV with Sue Headley, Greg.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Clark, Mark and Teresa.

Speaker 2: 1:28

We met Teresa Great fun.

Speaker 3: 1:30

We had a really good time.

Speaker 2: 1:31

Yeah, very good, I'm a presenter on Mega Music TV as well. Oh, fantastic, yeah, so it's like the universe has brought us together today. Cosmic Landy, thank you so much for sending me the new album. I must say it absolutely blew me away. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe because of the cosmic word, but it's good, old-fashioned 70s rock and roll.

Speaker 4: 1:59

Tell me how you guys met first and then how Cos landing came about okay, so how we met first, as in, rob and I, um, we met through music. So I um I was looking for a piano teacher. I had played piano as a child and then I wanted to sort of get my grades finished. Um, yeah, we um met through the advertiser, the old-fashioned way she came to me as a piano student the old-fashioned way.

Speaker 4: 2:28

Well, there are about a million names and I'm like I was with my nephew at the time. He's 36 now. He was only a kid back then and he actually pointed to a particular number because it was a whole lot.

Speaker 3: 2:39

List of piano teachers he goes why don't you ring that one? And so I did, and it was rob's.

Speaker 4: 2:45

The rest is history.

Speaker 2: 2:46

It must be a cosmic. Cosmic. It was a cosmic landing, yeah that's right, it landed right into my lap the old-fashioned way where you either read an ad in the paper or you know you tore the number off the community notice board. I know the days before social media yeah. How long have you guys been together as a couple?

Speaker 1: 3:12

They called us the whirlwind romance, because I think we were only eight months going out and we got married.

Speaker 4: 3:18

Within a year, but we've been together now over 30 years now, so quite a while, how did you find Bill and neil and become cosmic landing?

Speaker 1: 3:30

well, cosmic landing actually started about 25 years ago 20 years ago at least, when I discovered that vena could sing pretty well. We started a bit of a band back then. I got on the guitar about 20 years ago but I was on and off because I was a piano player. Veena started to sing some Janis Joplin numbers in this band. She always nailed it. You know songs like Cry Baby I don't know if you're familiar with Cry Baby by Janis Joplin. That's a pretty big number and Veena could do it wildly. She could also sing Barbra Streisand and Carole King and Donna Summer or any of that stuff. She could always do it so well. So I realised, wow, bina's got a magnificent voice, because I didn't know that in the beginning because she was my piano student. So we started a duo. We started playing as a duo. Then it wasn't until I'll just say it straight Bina had cancer for a time.

Speaker 1: 4:18

She had cervical cancer. She's all clear from that. But as a thing to get her spirits up again after having that going through all the treatments, we started recording, started singing and making up some songs, and I remember one of the first tracks that we recorded was a song called Distant Land, which is on our first album. Yeah, it just so happens that that actual song on the first album was one take, oneina, take. She sat down and I just said, look, I've got these chords and what do you think you could put put with it. And I had it on a bit of a loop being it goes. I think I've got something. Anyway, she sat down there with the mic, she was in a dressing gown, she put down this track and it's the very track that you hear on the song distant land now, which is quite mind-blowing.

Speaker 2: 5:06

You are listening to Still Rocking it, the podcast with Cheryl Lee. I think that's a cue for a song. Let's hear Distant Land, the title track of Cosmic Landing's debut album.

Speaker 1: 5:32

From there we started realising we can write pretty good music and we started writing a lot of songs, but then we ended up shelving it for about 10 years. We had three kids.

Speaker 2: 5:40

That'll keep you busy for a little while.

Speaker 4: 5:42

Yeah, we always dabbled a bit in some musical stuff. I was always writing lyrics and stuff. We were teaching piano, both of us were teaching, so we sort of were doing musical things, but we did share our own stuff. As you get older it's like, well, maybe that ship has sailed, you know. So we sort of put it on the back burner for a while.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Then we pulled them off the shelf and we thought, let's make an album for posterity. You know, just so our kids have got something. And we made, uh, distant land, the first album how old are the children?

Speaker 4: 6:13

now. Oh, children are adults now. They're um, 28, nearly one of them's nearly 28, 24 and 19, and they've been great. They're um. They're the ones that said to us get back into your music. They come to our gigs and they encourage us to keep going. So it's really good.

Speaker 2: 6:28

Excellent. You obviously then expanded from the duo and met Neil on Jumps and Bill.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Yeah, neil, come first. Actually, he was my old mate from high school when I was 16, when I first moved to Adelaide. He was one of the first people I met in South Australia that I called a friend what high school Brighton, and he was a brilliant, brilliant drummer back then like mind-blowing in fact for a 16-year-old. We were in a band back then and I was a keyboardist trying to be John Ward of Deep Purple, and then we lost contact, of course, but through Facebook we found him again and gave him some of our music. He really loved it. This was just as the first album came out and then we started playing. We had another bass player at the time, but it wasn't until we played the Rhino Room last year. Last year, for our third time we played there. Bill came along and saw the gig, so you can take that from there.

Speaker 3: 7:23

Yeah, rap was what I saw and heard. A couple of weeks later I got a phone call Do you want to join the band? I was a bit apprehensive because I'd been out of the game for 20 years and I thought no better not. I said I'll give it a go. Just try it. If you like it, come along. So I gave it a go, learned a couple of their songs and yeah, rest is history. Just loved it. Loved their songwriting abilities, their melodic way they write their songs melodically and yeah lyrics, fantastic, great team.

Speaker 2: 7:53

I take my hat off to you actually, because Adelaide's a pretty hard town when it comes to originals. I think it's absolutely amazing that you are writing your own material and recording and performing your own material. Kudos for that Well done. I've got a premonition You're going to be so. It's going to go through the roof. We just need to get your album out there so people can hear it. It is incredible. It's a beautiful body of work. You should be really, really proud of it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Still rocking the podcast with that radio chick, cheryl lee. What do the three of you like to listen to like if you're alone in your car? Have you got any guilty pleasures, or is it the obvious 70s bands?

Speaker 1: 8:46

In other music, not our own music. Yeah, yeah, we don't listen to much outside Cosmic Land. No.

Speaker 3: 8:51

What do you listen to, bill? I'm pretty diverse. I love all sorts of music, but mainly the blues rock style. I love some of the old stuff that came from the UK as well, like Free Bad Company, yeah, pink Floyd.

Speaker 2: 9:07

All the good stuff.

Speaker 3: 9:09

All the good stuff.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 9:11

And even some of the classy stuff like Robin Ford, from America. A bit different, but yeah, lovely, fantastic stuff. Yeah, a bit diverse.

Speaker 2: 9:21

So not a secret Miley Cyrus fan or something like that.

Speaker 3: 9:24

No, no, nothing like that, nothing like that. The radio station changes.

Speaker 2: 9:31

Vina. What about you? Have you got any secret guilty pleasures like Billy Ray.

Speaker 4: 9:35

Yeah, play school. No, it's a very, very. I'm a bit like Bill. I've got lots of different genres. There was a stage I went through listening to just jazz, but I do love, of course, the 70s rock. Janis Joplin you grew up on that. I've got older brothers Free. I was really threshing Melissa Etheridge album. I went and saw her years ago. She was great. I like Alicia Keys. She's a great, fantastic performer. I sort of like the raspiness and rawness of her and at home when I'm relaxing, I listen to Nora Jones Nice, she's good.

Speaker 1: 10:15

And Sade.

Speaker 4: 10:16

Sade. You know I love Janis Joplin and Alanis Morissette, of course, Carole King, Led Zeppelin.

Speaker 2: 10:25

Very Carol King. Led Zeppelin, very diverse. Yeah, you've been likened a little bit to Led Zeppelin, just on a different tangent. Are you going out to see the Zet Boys at the?

Speaker 1: 10:32

Bridgewood. It's the last time that I played, only a few months ago, so our ears are only just recovering now.

Speaker 2: 10:38

Getting over it. Our own ears too. From our own ears, it's been brilliant.

Speaker 4: 10:43

And Robert what about you.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Pretty much the same. Probably add in there when I was a kid I was a crazy Kiss fan. Just couldn't get enough of them. But mainly if you go through the albums, it was the Alive 1 and the Alive 2 albums of Kiss that I just thrashed. Yeah, just actually most of the time now when I'm not listening to you know our stuff Because when you're recording you've got to listen to your own music a lot. That's right, because you've got to send back stuff to your mixer and say, hey, that's a bit too loud. So you spend a lot of time listening to your own stuff. So when I'm not listening to that, I tend to put on relaxation albums. So there's an artist called Kataro and I reckon I've played that album Forever thousands of times I don't know how many times.

Speaker 4: 11:25

The kids say it's part of their DNA, their childhood it's in the house. The soundtrack of their childhood it's always on, yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:33

And also I listen to sort of instrumental jazz instrumental during the day, just easy listening jazz instrumental. I like listening to that yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:41

When did the debut album come out? Distant.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Land. That was the end of 2019.

Speaker 2: 11:46

Long time in making, then.

Speaker 1: 11:48

It was. It sat on the shelf for 10 years.

Speaker 2: 11:50

Second album, welcome to the Journey, came out in 2021, last year and you've got some really exciting news to share about album number three, wanderer.

Speaker 4: 12:03

Yeah, we just had our album launch at the Bridgeway just a couple of weekends ago, which was pretty exciting for us. Thank you to all those who supported us and came out. It was a great night and we were able to play all of our songs. There's eight songs on that album, plus heaps of our songs on the other two albums as well, which was great, and some new ones.

Speaker 2: 12:22

Number four Number four's on the way.

Speaker 1: 12:28

We've already got the music most of the music for number four already done, so we just have to record it now. It was a very exciting night for us. The Bridgeway is an awesome venue, like the sound. Dave Usher on sound did a magnificent job. He's just got a knack of getting the best out of what he's got up in front of him, and he really did add so much color to the music through his superior mixing.

Speaker 2: 12:47

So yeah, I take my hat off to the venue because they're back with live music again. Yes, they were inducted into the south australian music hall of fame as a venue not that long ago and that was where I used to hang out every thursday, friday, saturday, every Thursday, friday, saturday.

Speaker 3: 13:03

Saturday night.

Speaker 2: 13:04

It's fabulous to be back there again and hearing live music. So well done the Bridgeway you are listening to Still Rocking it, the podcast with Cheryl Lee Quick, song now from one of the artists that has been an inspiration to Cosmic Landing. Let's have a Janis Joplin song, one of my favourites Me and Bobby McGee MUSIC. Busted flat in Benrush Waiting for a train BANG. You do seem to have this uncanny ability to write authentic classic rock that does transport you back to the 70s. Where do you get that you know sound from?

Speaker 1: 13:53

We don't try to write that way, if you know what I mean. It's just that that's the only sound that I get inspired by. I just don't like playing anything else other than something that's got that raunchy, bluesy, rocky feel, and Bina seems to naturally sing that way. So when we combine that in a compositional sense and then we add in a rhythm section, like Neil and Bill as a rhythm section, so authentically 70s and again it's because of their, how they were brought up musically, that's what they were listening to, that's what turned them on why we joined the band.

Speaker 3: 14:26

Yeah, glad you did.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Yeah. So when we write and when we combine it as a band, we put it all together in the rehearsal room. It's spine-tingling stuff. You just think. You look at each other like, wow, that was just you know so good. It sounds like it's been around for 30, 40, 50 years, but we've only just discovered it.

Speaker 2: 14:46

It does. It's good, old-fashioned rock and roll, and it sounds like when you guys get together you just make that magic happen.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Yeah, it's a chemistry, definitely a chemistry, and we're all great mates. It's very easy to be in the room with Bill. He's an Ikarian from an island which is known as one of the most laid-back islands in Greece, and Veena and Bill come from the same island. No way. Yeah, they're called Ikaria and, yeah, it's known as the most relaxed island in hospitable Bill's from one of the most laid-back villages in that whole island. Amazing, I'm awake, it's time. We always nudge him.

Speaker 4: 15:25

He's still here, Bill. Our parents are from the same island, so we share the same cousins. We're like cousins, cousins.

Speaker 2: 15:31

Yeah, isn't that like everybody from Greece?

Speaker 1: 15:34

Yeah, yeah. You're all related. If you're a Greek person, you know them all.

Speaker 4: 15:38

We're all cousins, that's right.

Speaker 2: 15:40

Have you got any dates coming up that you would like to tell us about?

Speaker 1: 15:48

As you said earlier, the thing with Adelaide itself is it's very dominated by cover bands and, being an original band, it's hard to continually get people to come out and support. It's quite a big push to get a huge support base. We happen to have a very good family that supports us, so a lot of our family and friends will come. So we're planning to do around in adelaide probably two or three concerts a year, but we are planning to head out regionally, south australia country next year. What we plan to do in the next few months is just really, you know, talk to people like yourself on radio and get our music out there a bit so people start listening to it. Yes, um, then we can say, hey, we've got a concert and hopefully people will come.

Speaker 2: 16:27

So keep an eye on the Facebook page. There's also a website, cosmiclandingcom A-Z-M-I-K. Also, if they'd like to check out the three albums so far, the website or the usual suspects, iTunes.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Yeah, we're on all of it. Spotify, Spotify. The actual new album's not going to come on Spotify for another three weeks. You can get it on Bandcamp. At the moment that's where it is available. So if you want to support us for $8, you can get the whole album and download it. So appreciate all that sort of support. But yeah, eventually it will get on Spotify and iTunes and Deezer and all those other ones.

Speaker 2: 17:07

Grab it from your website even yes, and you can read about the band as well. It's a great little read to hear about the history of the band. I know this is like going to ask you to pick your favourite child, but we're going to go out with one of your songs from the latest album. Do you have a favourite that you like to play?

Speaker 3: 17:25

I love them all um. I can't pick.

Speaker 1: 17:28

That's a hard one I know bill particularly loves something happening. That's something happening.

Speaker 3: 17:33

I love that song.

Speaker 1: 17:34

It's probably the most laid-back song on the whole album. Bina likes wretched soul and I'm in to give me back. But I'm happy to go with something.

Speaker 3: 17:40

I'm not fussed either one of those songs is fantastic, so what do you think?

Speaker 2: 17:44

Cheryl, I actually did ask myself that question before we came on and I thought I can't pick one either. I thought oh that's a great song. That's a great song, so it's the next one. You know it's an album of eight great songs. We might play yours, Veena, Wretched Soul.

Speaker 1: 18:04

Yeah, oh, thank you Appreciate it so much, thank you. Thank you so much, cheryl.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Thank you guys for your time. I know you've had a busy day. I really appreciate it and I hope to catch up with you at a gig soon. I'll see you down the front.

Speaker 1: 18:17

Yep See you. Thank you, Cheryl Bye See you.

Speaker 2: 18:20

Still off my podcast with with that Radio Chick, cheryl Lee. As promised, we're going to go out with one of my eight favourite songs from the album of eight songs, his Wretched Soul. You're with Cheryl Lee, that Radio Chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking it podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.