A song a day: Beasts of Bourbon - Chase the Dragon

There was a brand of oz rock in the 80's and early 90's which was a slithering, beer drenched, sweat stained, evil as fuck cool. Descendants of the Birthday Party, this brand of rock n' roll was fierce and unrelenting and the best exponents of it was the Beasts of Bourbon. It helped that they liked to explore the darks side of life and featured one of Australia's greatest front men of all time, Tex Perkins. As Henry Rollins said famously "Mick Jagger wishes he were Tex Perkins." Perkins found mainstream fame in the Cruel Sea but when he was with the Beasts, it was like he was off the leash. I remember the first time I saw them and Perkins spent his time spitting on the front row in contempt for their lethargic reaction to the Beasts spectacle.

The Beasts have many great songs but Chase the Dragon is their masterpiece, a concise tour de force exploring the unsavoury world of smack and drug trafficking. Fueled by a lightening riff and featuring one of the greatest rhymes of all time (souvenir with Kampuchea), this is a mean, underhanded fight of a song. This song makes me want to drink beer and fuck with people. This song makes me want to pump my fist in the air and praise Satan. But most of all, this song wants me to turn the volume way up and revel in the pure brute force of ugly rock n' roll.

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