Song Challenge-Roaches 1,Tenants 0

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: SINSULL
Date: 04 Oct 04 - 07:29 PM

Horrible monsters. I had an apartment where they had inbred into white. Gross! I also had pinto mice - the family before me let their white mice free when they tired of them. The sight of one roach would trigger an all points bulletin and send me running for traps, sprays, motels, and any other murderous device I could lay my hands on. I protect spiders and snakes, even mice but roaches - no way!

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Oct 04 - 02:51 PM

Here's another classic roach blues from the working draft of the Housing & Neighborhood Songbook:

Roaches are another common horror of rental housing. One of my recurrent memories is of waking up one moonlit night at a seedy resort hotel to observe the roaches crawling up the walls while others, losing their grip, dropped down from the ceiling. Good friends of mine in Michigan used to stage an annual spring roach race for the entertainment of themselves and other inmates of married student housing; suitable prizes were awarded, with a specific one reserved for the foreign competition.

        "Cockroach Blues" was composed by singer-songwriter Julius Lester in 1965 and will surely be appreciated by those of us who have shared digs with these ancient and persistent pests.

Words and music by Julius Lester
© 1965 Hyperson Music Publishers
Recorded on Julius Lester, Vanguard VSD 79199

Cockroach Blues


Lord, I wouldn't mind roaches
If they would help me pay my rent;
I said I wouldn't mind roaches
If they would help me pay my rent,
But you know a roach said to me, "You better move,
I want one of them luxury apartments."

I bought a spray last night
And I sprayed all over the house...(as above)
I got up this morning,
Roaches thanked me for killing a mouse.

Now I wish I had a penny
For every roach I've seen...(as above)
Nobody in this world
Would have to work again.

There were some roaches on the stove,
They were standing around in a crowd...(as above)
I walked over to 'em;
Roaches turned around and yelled "Freedom now!"

Warm regards,
andlady's Daughter

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Amos
Date: 04 Oct 04 - 12:41 PM

Illustrated Blattids can be seen here.

A

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Oct 04 - 02:51 PM

Nice one, FC!

I've posted this one somewhere else here but it's certainly appropriate:

Annabel Dwyer & Friends © 1979
East Lansing, Michigan
Tune: "The Eggplant that Ate Cincinnati"

The Roaches Inherit the Earth

Em                              
I must offer to you a confession,
---Am-------------------------Em
It?s one that I?ve known from my birth,
-----------Am                     
Given nuc-lear power,
--Em               
In that final hour
----Bm
The roaches inherit the earth!

Chorus:

Bm----Em------Bm
Dah-di dum-dum, dum-dum,
Bm----Em------Bm
Dah-di dum-dum, dum-dum!


You may call it my ghoulish obsession,
It?s a subject which gives me much mirth,
Experts are all thumbs,
When the meltdown comes,
And the roaches inherit the earth...

I?ve heard from the NRC stooges,
And nuclear dupes by the score,
Their plans were respected,
Were seldom rejected,
And nuke plants grew more and more...

We?ll soon have a Garden of Eden,
We?ll live off the fat of the land,
Strontium 90 is dandy,
Plutonium?s candy,
And for roaches won?t it be grand...

Experts are all thumbs,
When the meltdown comes,
And the roaches inherit the earth!

Warm regards,
Landlady's Daughter

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: GUEST,Flash Company
Date: 03 Oct 04 - 05:53 AM

You'd better come home, Endo Beneberu,
And bring a smoke bomb or two,
The 'roaches moved into the kitchen,
And they're eating the stew

Come on home to your apartment
We got to drive them away,
They're doing break dance on the cooker,
They're mating on my Breakfast tray

Endo Beneberu, why don't you come home?
Endo Beneberu, why do you leave me all alone?

La-laaaa, la la la la la la la laaaaa
La la la la la la la laaaaa
La la la la la la la la laaaaaaaaa!

You better come home Endo Beneburo,
Your smoke bombs didn't work at all,
'Cos they made a big explosion,
Blew all the cupboards off the wall

The fire department came a-running
They said the building was unsound,
So they rescued all the 'roaches
And bulldozed it to the ground.

Endo Beneberu, I hope you understand
Endo Beneberu, your bombs have cost us fifty grand!!!!

Alltogether...
La laaaaa, la la la la la la laaaaa.....etcetera

Could'nt resist that!

FC

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Charley Noble
Date: 02 Oct 04 - 08:56 PM

Wow! Just when you think a thread is stone cold dead it springs to life! I guess some topics are immortal.

Nice one, Mary.

Maybe we could pen one to the title "The No-Tell Roach Motel."

Cordially,
Landlady's Daughter

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: SINSULL
Date: 02 Oct 04 - 11:59 AM

To the tune of Sixteen Tons:

Some people say a roach is disgusting and gross
Poison 'em with canisters; give 'em a dose
Endo Beneberu planned their demise
But blew himself away instead to his surprise.

CHORUS
He loaded eighteen bombs and what did he get?
Missing ceiling, shattered windows, no cabinets
They estimate the damage at 50 grand
But the cockroach infestation's still way out of hand

If you see Endo comin', better run and hide
Lotta folks didn't and nearly died.
He's got his cans of arsenic and cyanide gas
It couldn't harm a flea but lands Mom on her ass

CHORUS

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 04 - 10:36 AM

The thread on military cadences has an example that says "he ain't gonna jump no more". In that thread I wrote that this refrain sounds alot like the African American antebellum dance songs "Ain't gonna rain no more" and "Ain't gonna dance no more".

In 2002 I collected a version of the roaches and bedbug rhyme from Crystal, a thirty something African American woman who lives in Duquesne, PA. Crystal said she "sang" this when she was a growin up in Duquesne:

Oh I work up Sunday morning
I looked up on the wall.
I saw a gang of roaches
playin a game of basketball.

The score was nine to nothing.
The roaches had the lead.
I went and got my roach spray
And sprayed them 1, 2, 3.

You better stop them roaches
crawlin up my wall.
Feed them chicken & rice
and some day they'll be
shootin dice.
--

The last verse is sung slightly faster than the other verses.

The refrain "it ain't gonna rain no more" appears to have been dropped from this rhyme, at least as Cyrstal remembers it.

I should also say that I have no memory at all of this rhyme from my childhood, "youth-hood," and "young adult-hood". But then again, my memory sometimes isn't worth a hill of beans.

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Dharmabum
Date: 22 Apr 01 - 11:30 AM

Blattid is the entomologists? term for cockroach.

Though I could be wrong, Any entomologists out there?

DB.

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Charley Noble
Date: 22 Apr 01 - 10:37 AM

Not bad for a start! I hate to confess denseness, Dharmabum, but what do you mean by "blattid president" or is this a typo; if it's something new and obscene that I can use to refer to our current resident of the puche house, I'd like to know.

Crafty Yankee, I haven't sung your bedbug song in years; reminds me of when I woke up one night in a remote Ethiopia hotel. In the moonlight I could see the bugs crawling up the wall, onto the ceiling where they would lose their grip and falllll...

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: CRANKY YANKEE
Date: 22 Apr 01 - 03:43 AM

CONT'D FROM PRECEEDING AOL was about to do me a nasty and throw me out. Here's the song:

I I woke up in the morning and I looked upon the wall,
The Bedbugs and the roaches wuz havin' a game of ball.
The score was six tuh nuttin, the roaches wuz ahead
A bedbug hit a homer an' knocked me out O' bed
OO...........h!
IIAt five ocklock in the mornin' the jailer comes around,
With a piece o' bread an' butter that weighs a half a pound
The butter it was rancid, the bread it was all stale
An' that's the way they treat yuh in the old "Raymond Street Jail"
OOO....................hh III
a cat wuz by the sewer an' over there he died
An' in duh mornin' papers, they called it "Sewer-side"
(chorus)OO..........hhhh
It aint gonna rain no more no more, it aint gonna rain no more
So how in the hell can the old folks tell
Dat it aint gonna rain no more.

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: CRANKY YANKEE
Date: 22 Apr 01 - 03:19 AM

Here's one we used to sing when I was a genuine "Street Urchin" in Brooklyn, N.Y. in the 1930's.

To the tune of "It Aint Gonna Rain No More, No More.

Must be sung with balled up fists, Left fist over the left knee, with weight resting on right leg whilst singing the first line . This configuration changes from one side to the other with each line of the song. May only be sung by boys in short trousers, with suspenders (braces for Britts) or knickerbockers with a belt and long socks, or by girls wearing a slightly torn pretty little pink dress and a big bow in the hair.

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From:
Date: 22 Apr 01 - 01:40 AM

One night when I had insomnia, I made up a verse for a cockroach song. It is not relevant to the subject of the thread but it goes:

"Please," said the cockroach, "please don't take my life."
"I've got 2,547 children and a very sickly wife"

He was a bad man that cruel Murray Lee

"What do I care about your children.
what do I care about your wife
You done ate my Stetson Hat and I'm boun' to take your life"

He was a bad man, that cruel Murray Lee.

Sung to the tune of Miss. John Hurt's "Stakolee".

Murray

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Dharmabum
Date: 21 Apr 01 - 10:42 PM

WHEN ROACHES TAKE OVER THE WORLD
(sung to when jonny comes marching home)

We run on your floors & down your halls
Hurrah, Hurrah,
We hide in your pantry & live in your walls
Hurrah, Hurrah,
World domination's our ultimate plan
You'll never kill us with an aerosol can
And we'll all survive
When roaches take over the world.

We're takin over the human race
Hurrah, Hurrah,
They'll blow themselves up & leave not a trace
Hurrah, Hurrah,
We'll just sit back & watch all the fun
With humans like Endo to get the job done
And we'll all survive
When roaches take over the world.

Remember the day the human race fell
Hurrah, Hurrah,
And mother earth became a cockroach motel
Hurrah, Hurrah,
We now have a blattid president
But we don't always know where the votes went
But we all survived
And cockroaches took over the world.

DB.

Subject: RE: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Sorcha
Date: 21 Apr 01 - 07:05 PM

Hey, songwriters!! Don't ignore this one!(refresh)

Subject: SONG CHALLENGE-Roaches 1,Tenants 0
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Apr 01 - 09:47 AM

This is an unofficial song challenge inspired by an article I spewed coffee over in today's newspaper. I dedicate it to Guest: Landlady's Daughter and hope she can find room for the results in her forthcoming housing song book.

BUG BOMBS RIP APARTMENT, BUT SPARE THE BUGS
(The Associated Press, Portland Press Herald, 4/21/01)

SAN DIEGO – Cockroaches 1, Tenants 0.

Eighteen bug bombs meant to rid an apartment of cockroaches set off an explosion that ripped open its ceiling, shattered windows and tore cabinets from kitchen walls.

No one was injured, though three people were in a bedroom of the 700-square-foot apartment when a pilot light set off fumes from the bug bombs. The tenants were shielded by a closed door.

"I was half asleep and heard this loud 'bang, bang!'" said Endo Beneberu, 17. "That got me awake."

While the explosion earlier this month caused $50,000 in damage, it didn't appear to do much to the cockroaches, which were seen crawling around the apartment as firefighters packed up.


Clearly there is a song in it somewhere, or at least an honorable mention in the annual Darwin Awards. I love the name of the alert tenant "Endo;" I'm sure he'll go far. We don't need stronger health codes or enforcement with such enterprising tenants. I hope they deduct the costs of the 18 bug bombs from next month's rent.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble aka Roll&Go-C