Inflation has been in the news lately, and it has caused issues off and on over the decades. It has also been prominent in rock music over the years.
Pay telephones were on just about every corner until about 20 years ago when everyone started having cell phones. If you had a dime you could make a local phone call.
In the Turtles song “Happy Together” from 1967, they sang ” I should call you up, invest a dime”. A few years later in Jim Croce’s song “Operator (That’s not the Way it Feels)” he told the operator” you can keep the dime” after the failed attempt to reach his party.
In 1981 the Bell Telephone system claimed because of inflation they had to raise the pay phone cost from a dime to a quarter. So in the 1990’s when Travis Tritt had issues with a significant other, he sang “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)”.
The most interesting inflationary song lyric is in a song Joni Mitchell wrote in 1970. “Big Yellow Taxi” was written about the environment and “you don’t know what you got till its gone.” It’s catchy enough that three other artists covered the song and made the Top 100. (Joni put out a studio and a live version also).
The first top 40 version was by The Neighborhood and the line is ” “they took all the trees and put ’em in a tree museum and they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em.”
Then in 1995 Amy Grant put out her version charged 25 bucks just to see ’em. “
I found an online inflation calculator and it said the $1.50 in 1970 would be $5.89 in 1995. So that’s an expensive museum visit! I could not figure out, using any of MY high school math, to find a formula to see what the inflation rate would be from $1.50 to $25 in 25 years. (The calculators didn’t give me a way to plug in the numbers and I am not a math wiz by any means). Another online percentage calculator said the increase was 1566.6 % from $1.50 to $25.00 but didn’t factor in the years, but maybe that doesn’t matter.
Then the next version was by Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton in 2003. And they went back to the $1.50 to see the trees in a museum. According to the calculator the price should have been $7.11. Either way the numbers wouldn’t have sounded quite right singing them.
The calculator said the average inflation rate from 1970 to 2003 was 4.83 % producing a cummulative rate of 374.2%. Certainly different than the 1566% mentioned above.
So it’s a good thing our records, music, concerts and other living expenses did NOT go up like the rate it was from that song from 1970 to the 1995.
Enjoy the songs below.
The Neighborhood version …
https://youtu.be/WNUxEQp1Qc0
Joni Mitchell’s version.
https://youtu.be/94bdMSCdw20
Amy Grant’s version..
https://youtu.be/oiJWwWP1g7w
Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton
https://youtu.be/tvtJPs8IDgU
The Turtles song…
https://youtu.be/Oi_3UMhZ1UI
Jim Croce’s Operator
https://youtu.be/FPu_G-T28iU
Travis Tritt’s Quarter Song…
https://youtu.be/29ebiwO4O70
Wow saw this video for the first time. They had a REAL pay phone in it.
( FYI… A little Cell phone history as I worked at the phone company when cellular phones came out to the public in 1984. It wasn’t until 1997 or so that the shrinking size of cell phones allowed easy portability causing a decline in pay phone use).
Gary Lovell
Copyright. 2021
Unusual Perspectives 