4/22/2010 - Rose and the Arrangement

There's always something eating a city in songs. Eggplants that eat Chicago, tomatoes that eat New York. Babies that eat Los Angeles. But nothing compares to the horror of the cockroach that ate Cincinnati.
Rose and the Arrangement was a Las Vegas band that in 1974 released "The Cockroach who Ate Cincinnati" under the alias, Possum. Little did they know that this song would become their biggest hit thanks to the play it found on the Dr. Demento show. The year it was released, it hit #22 in the funny 25. Then it went to #8 in 1975 and 1976.
So here's "The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati" by Rose and the Arrangement. Chad Ocho-Cinco approves:



Lyrics
Uh-uh, don't touch that dial!

I must offer to you a confession,
I like movies that give me a fright.
If the subject is horror, I got to see more or
I won't be contented all night.
You may call it my ghoulish obsession,
It's a subject on which I get chatty.
But the worst one it seems, haunting all of my dreams
Was the cockroach that ate Cincinnati!

I've seen ghouls and hobgoblins and witches
And some moth-eaten werewolves with fangs.
There were creatures that chattered and others that clattered,
And Japanese monsters with fangs (ah-so).
Frankenstein gives me the shakes,
And Count Dracula's driving me batty.
But they're not on a par with the worst one by far
The cockroach that ate Cincinnati (ha ha ha ha)!

Oh, he must have needed a seltzer.
It's amazing how much he got down!
For lunch, he'd just chew up a suburb or two,
And for dinner, he ate the whole town (BURP!).
Willard just sent me out laughing,
I thought Ben looked a little bit ratty (sorry, sorry about that),
But they're not half as bad as the worst scare I've had -
The Cockroach that ate Cincinnati!

Oh, my heart nearly stopped; he would never be topped -
The cockroach that ate Cincinnati! OLE!

Ole? That's dumb!