The world adores matt hayward

Ages ago on the Eat It program on RRR radio, they talked about some guy called Cameron doing a wild mushroom hunt by the coast. It’s $45 to basically fossick around roads in Red Hill, looking for edible wild mushrooms. Sounds like a rort but when you match it up to the T’Gallant winery and get a coffee and a nosh up afterwards it was pretty cool.

Firstly I should be honest though. I think I didn’t learn a huge great deal. You also can’t take your mushrooms home because even though this guy Cameron (who also sells wild mushies at the Queen Victoria Markets) is a bona fide boffin,  the risk of accidentally grabbing something wildly toxic is just too great. Infact only about 5% of the mushrooms sighted were actually edible. You certainly do learn a bit about mushrooms that can kill you though. So in hindsight, you don’t come out of the hunt with a PhD in mushrooms, but it’s fun and interesting enough to make you want to go and cook something.

Don’t bother booking lunch at the T’Gallant restaurant afterwards. Because when you get back to the vineyard, they will fill you up with mushroom pizza, very hot mushroom soup and a glass of Red Hill’s most lush pinot noir. It’s meant to be nibbles, but no one leaves hungry! They say that they will cook up your mushies when you get back. But meh they don’t and they probably wouldn’t have time to inspect and prepare them anyway.

Back at the winery there’s also ample tastings of the wineries soft reds, moscatos, pinot grigios and chardies. Frankly though, they looked very overpriced for cellar door prices.  It all works well though, after all this is Red Hill, the Toorak of the Bay and frankly I don’t think the locals who were settling in for a quiet bottle were phased, judging by the new Porsches, an Aston Martin DB7 and a Bentley Continental coupe that arrived in the car park when we finished the hunt! It’s all very chic!

If you choose to do this thing, it should only be on for autumn and you’ll need to wear your sturdiest shoes and warmest clothes you’re usually too cool to wear. And don’t worry about looking cool, that is until you get to the winery.

N.B. Red Hill is about 70 minutes drive from Melbourne CBD and very close to Arthur’s Seat and Phillip Island etc., so yeah, it’s worth the trip.

Links
Mushrooms in May Flyer
T’Gallant Winery

In the June 2006 edition of Modern Motor, (’Singing from the Same Song Book’ by Bill Tuckey) they reckon that the Australian Design Rules (ADRs) that govern everything from seat belt and head light intensity to width of number plate recesses are being abolished. And fair enough too. As they point out, they cost Aussie consumers a lot in mark ups when bringing cars to market.

John Conomos the former head of Toyota Australia reckons that the SC400 Lexus coupe and the Toyota Echo would’ve come out a lot differently if not for the ADRs. Let’s not forget that in the early 90s, the SC400 would’ve been worth the best part of $100K AUD. Apparently it never ended up here because its Japanese number plate recess in the front bumper wasn’t wide enough to accomodate an Aussie number plate. Oh dear. Too expensive the bean counters said and they gave up. While the Echo ended up going on sale, the ADRs were apparently the bane of its existence. While these are two isolated examples, it shows how burocracy got in the way of getting cars to market that were of Luftwaffe like quality.

The irony of course is now the Lexus SC400 is all over the streets because so many grey importers registered for SEVS (Special Enthusiast Vehicle System) rights to import them in small but noticable quantities. Now that $100K car can be bought 15 years old for $10K.

This brings me to my point. If they bugger off the ADRs, and gel with the EU and Japanese design rules, what about all the SEVS liscenced importers? Can we still get grey imports? All these importers who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in SEVS compliance fees, was all their money in vein now the ADRs the SEVS scheme was designed to enforce don’t exist? Will the price of the $140K 2005 Mustang drop to something more reasonable? A big chunk of that has to be SEVS compliance costs. Who knows.

All I know is, I hope it doesn’t mean that they let crap in the ADRs stopped. For example the Proton Iswara was going to be a run about that made a Kia Rio look exorbitant selling for under $10K brand spankers.  Based on 1983 Mitsubishi Colt architecture, there was probably nothing left of it after the mandatory frontal collision test as part of ADR compliance. And that was the last we heard of that.

I hope we get the best of 3 worlds out of this change:
- We get cheaper and better grey imports now they don’t have to be made to comply with ADRs
- We get cheaper cars sold domestically in Australia
- We don’t get sub standard cars that somehow slip through the cracks, eg the Proton Iswara.

According to the National Transport Commission Web site, reviewing of the ADRs was announced 18/11/2004 with no ETA. All my favourite grey import sites and the DOTARS web site have nothing to say. No one has anything to say on this hot potato! This could be the biggest thing in 50 years in the Aussie motor industry. Wierd. More to come soon chaps.

What to say about Lower House/Upper House? It’s tres chic Melbourne dining for the CBDophile. All the typical touches exist, the wine FOLDER (not list) yet cheeky touches like the daily menu served on cardboard cut out of wine boxes. How’s the food? Well good but typically on par. But the wine tasting! Well sir, so long as you’ve come on a Monday night after work, you’re in the right place.

"Ben Know’s Wine" is Ben Edwards sharing his knowledge and plonk for those with a keen ear and nose.  Being quite the sommelier (president of the Austrlalian Association thereof infact), each week you’re assured of tasting something very special. I wen’t tonight (15/05/06) and they featured the Blanck collection of wines from Alsace (pronounced Al-sass) France.

Also in tow was Fred form Blank wines and they featured some fine aromatics: Pinot Gris, Gurwutztraminer, Rhieslings and a Pinot Blanc. All came with tasting notes and expert winemaker commentary as they gracefully make their way around the tables. It has to be said that the last two aromatics were Grand Cru and Lieux Dits (designations of France’s most prestigious winemaking areas).

If nothing else, the night really taught you about the essence of good aromatic wines. So next time you’re drinking a dinkum Aussie Pinot Gris, or even a French one, you now have a respectable benchmark on which to judge it. Because chances are, you won’t often come across wine as great as what Ben is privvy to. Thank god he’s willing to share in the experience.

Suffice it to say, this is for the wine lover interested in the journey and not the destination. Every week apparently, there’s something different and new on offer. Lower House would hold about 70 people for tasting so best to get there at 5.30 when the festivities begin. After your tasting, you can select dinner from the regular menu, or a charcuterie platter, or make your jolly way home. Ben Knows Wine is on indefinitely, but it’s definitely not to be missed.

For more info, have a look at this Fed Square web page.

Timmy and the boys have bought out their absolute heaviest release to date. There’s every chance when you throw in the CD and hear Thank God I’ve Hit the Bottom, you might think you have the wrong CD. Rest assured you haven’t. This album sounds more like the result of an amphetamine fueled punch up in the back of a tour van then 12 months in the studio. And with Rock and Roll, that’s a good thing!

There are some out and out classic tracks straight off the bat. Highlights are the angsty My Own Hand, the aforementioned Hit the Bottom, Nervous Kid and The Sweet Life. Slower moments such as Explaining Cricket (to Americans), Thuggery and Secrets still hit the spot. Even though they slow down, they never go below the speed limit. The page of this album is like mashing the loud pedal down through the floor and only slowing down when you see cops coming. All 35 minutes of it!

Sonically, this is You Am I’s best sounding album since Hi Fi Way. Songwriting wise, probably their best written since #4 Record. Every song is full of Roger’s trademark Aussie lingo and experiences. From the getting picked on by BMX Bandits as a teenager in Nervous Kid to the ‘You’re beautiful, but you’re fucked’ of The Sweet Life it’s all there.

What I like most about this release is that it’s the tightest lead guitarist Davey Lane has ever been with the band. There are great duel guitar parts in Gunslinger and sleazy bluesy harmonies in The Sweet Life and just plain no shit, hard hittin’ riffs all the way through.

If you want a listen, NineMSN are still doing a free preview of each track on the album. But you know what, screw that. It’s worth just going out and buying this. It’s pretty damn good.

Ok Funkstas! A buddy forwarded me a link to this new site the other day. Quite literally if you have speakers (or headphones at work) and a web browser, that’s all you need to listen to heaps of unlimited radio. Literally this is all you do is:

1. Go to www.pandora.com
2. Type in the name of your favourite artist when prompted
3. Music starts playing music in a Flash plug in by (or similar to) that artist
4. Now you have your own personal radio station based on music similar to that artist.

The audio quality is good, but the simplicity of this application is just staggering. Within 15 seconds, you’re up and running. And no other site I know can boast that. I was a veteran of www.launch.com before they were bought otu by Yahoo and insisted that everyone be American. In fairness, Launch was a better service only because it was more complex in its rating of artists and tracks. Pandora only lets you ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ a track and not black list an artist, which would be nice.

Obviously, Pandora could be the greatest thing in the world, but will rise and fall based on the catalogue of the music avaiable. Well, in terms of rock, so far so good. No problems finding Motley Crue, Motorhead or Turbonegro. I’m told it’s not so good for doof doof, but that’s a good thing as far as i’m concerned!

What really is amazing is also that they say that they recommend music not basic on ‘what other fans of artist X like . . ‘ but apparently the Genome project (of which Pandora resulted) suggests music based on musical characteristics, pitch, tone etc. I will need to read up more on this because I am heavily skeptical, but it certainly is providing different results to Launch. Well in the sense that they’re all melodically similar.

According to their site, the Musical Genome Project participants have "Over the past 5 years, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world." So there, something a little different!

You will notice a little further down the page is a list of my 5 favourite tracks on my Pandora stations. This too is a cute little feature. It should also be noted, these tracks don’t describe my musical taste to a tee, but it’s close! So make your work day a little bit more interesting and visit Pandora.com. It friggin rocks.

This is a lazy review so I warn you in advance. Danny Bhoy was brilliant. in fact I had no idea he was Scottish. Like most, I assumed that he was Irish. James Byrne on the other hand was well and truly Irish! If you had to pick one over the other, i’d probably say Danny Bhoy, because he was a bit less hyer, more suave and has a lot more structure to his shows. Although well and truly funny, Byrne for the most part picked on two 14 year old kids in the front row for half the show!

So there you go. Both are great. If you like your Bobcat Goldthaite, hyperactive, schitzo comedy with an Irish tinge, catch David Byrne next time you’re out. If you like it a bit more polished, Danny’s your man.  But for the here and now, of the 4 shows i’ve seen this time around (Spymonkeys, James Byrne, Danny Bhoy and Demetri Martin) Demetri and Danny Bhoy are an equal first place.

Both fantastic. Four out of 5 stars each!