The Mothers-In-Law
Sometimes when I’m looking for something for this blog I come across other things that distract me like a shiny object flashed in front of an infant. Whatever I was seeking is forgotten and I’m off on a new tangent. Such is the case today.
I was looking for a piece of film of a 60’s garage band when I stumbled on this. It’s from the short-lived television series The Mothers-In-Law which ran from1967-1968. It was an unremarkable but funny sitcom starring Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard as mismatched in-laws of a young married couple. I remember watching it as a kid and enjoying it but can’t remember anything specific. It was just there.
I only bring it up because of this clip featuring the TV family somehow hosting the 60’s band The Seeds in their living room, where the band performs their garage classic Pushin’ Too Hard. It’s a great bit of kitschy television, the kind of moment that the 60’s TV often produced. It’s almost as good as the clip from the Mike Douglas Show with a performance of Mustang Sally by a band called The Cavemen, dressed in goofy Fred Flintstone costumes. What the heck, I’ll throw that in as well.
Redtree Times 
Ah, those innocent years in the mid-60s when “rock and roll”, long hair that wasn’t all that long, and bands with funny names, was just gonna be a phase those crazy kids were going through. If Kaye and Eve and Mike and Arthur only knew what was coming, just over the hill, just around the corner.
“Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?”
Kudos on throwing in the Mike and Arthur and the Dylan lines. Yes, there is an innocent quality to the music and pop culture, in general, of the time. There was still a monolithic quality to pop culture then, before it began branching off into narrower and narrower niches, which is where the seachange in popular culture and perception began to blossom.
God, I remember those days. Steve Allen read the words to Surfin’ Bird as a poem. The Beatles followed a Grade-B Nichols and May act on the Sullivan Show. (I forget their names, but This American Life did a great piece on them) And Rob and Laura Petrie hide a young Chad and Jeremy (playing as the Redcoats) from screaming teenage fans in their New Rochelle suburb.
One day while cutting class, this was in ’72 or ’73, I saw two sitcoms from ten years earlier – Father Knows Best and Hazel. Both dealt with the same topic, coincidentally: those crazy kids.
In FKB, the parents are reminded of their own crazy youth when their kids dress up for a costume party in their old raccoon coats and flapper dresses. They back off pushing their kids to be proper adults, wearing ties instead of James Dean Levis.
In Hazel, the young kid, letting his hair grow and playing that crazy rock and roll, in the end learns the error of his ways, cuts his hair and rejoins adult-approved society.
Yes, Father Knows Best did know best. Or at least better. And Hazel was bullshit.
They were odd times. Odd times.
I wonder where the Seeds’ lead singer is today and if he still has that little cape. Mick Jagger didn’t have to worry.
“I wonder where the Seeds’ lead singer is today . . . ”
In the age of Google and Wikipedia there’s no need to wonder. Sky Saxon died in 2009. He was 71. Or 63.
It’s funny you mention the cape. As I was walking through the dark this morning to the studio, I started singing the chorus from “Pushin’ Too Hard” and I wished I had mentioned that little cape in yesterday’s post and the fact that they never really caught on except for Mick’s brief period with them.