Season 7 Episode 9: Rock of Ages

Al’s paycheck has been seized by bill collectors, so he throws himself at the shoe store’s salesman of the month contest with an intensity that eventually crosses a line even his own son objects to. The prize is a first class trip to Honolulu. Al wins it by selling Marcy a replacement pair after arranging for Seven to steal the ones she was wearing, and by hijacking a sale from a young woman Bud has brought home, with Bud physically trying to restrain him. Peg then calls the airline and trades the single first class ticket for four standby seats, so the family ends up in the terminal instead of the cabin. Al’s consolation is that he can still get into the first class lounge if he can pass as somebody important, so he invents a rock career: Axl Bundy, formerly of Shoes N’ Socks. Inside the lounge is a genuine assembly of 1960s musicians playing themselves, Richie Havens, Spencer Davis, Robby Krieger of the Doors, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders, Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits and John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful. They believe him, invite him to jam, and nobody can retain his assumed name for more than a sentence. Why these six men are all in one airport lounge on the same afternoon is the joke the episode is building toward, and the reveal is a good deal more humiliating than Al had bargained for. For an episode that exists mainly to get six aging musicians into one room, it is unusually well constructed.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 15, 1992
• Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 9
• Overall episode number: 140
• Written by: Al Aidekman
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: October 30, 1992
• Production note: Six musicians appear as themselves, from the Doors, Herman’s Hermits, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Spencer Davis Group and Paul Revere and the Raiders.
• Title note: Most likely from the 1983 Def Leppard single, with a second meaning in the age of the band Al joins. His alias, Axl Bundy of Shoes N’ Socks, is a Guns N’ Roses joke.

Guest Cast

• Richie Havens as himself
• Spencer Davis as himself
• Robby Krieger as himself
• Mark Lindsay as himself
• Peter Noone as himself
• John Sebastian as himself
• Mark J. Goodman as the VJ (credited as Mark Goodman)
• Aaron Lustig as the first class lounge attendant
• Teresa Lee as Petal (credited as Theresa Lee)

Axl Bundy of Shoes N’ Socks

The running gag that makes the lounge scenes work is that not one of the six can hold on to Al’s stage name. Over the course of the episode he is addressed as Awful Grungy, Ankle and Maxwell, and at one point Robby Krieger simply calls him Al, which nobody notices.

Peg’s circuit of the lounge is Katey Sagal’s best moment of the season. She works along the couch delivering the identical compliment to Spencer Davis, then Peter Noone, then Richie Havens, each man reacting slightly differently, and then reaches a fourth figure slumped at the bar and starts again before he turns around. Her recovery is instant and worse than the original.

The reason Al is prepared to sacrifice his son’s evening for one shoe sale is the episode’s nastiest joke, and the show lets Bud see it coming. His escalating protest while Al walks across the room toward the girl is played entirely straight, which makes it funnier.

Mark J. Goodman, who introduces the group’s performance at the end, was one of MTV’s five original VJs alongside Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn. He had also turned up on the Vinnie & Bobby spinoff.

Famous Quotes

• Bud, bringing a date home: “Hi, Dad. This is Petal.” Petal: “It’s part of a flower.” Bud: “Isn’t she great? I met her in quantum physics. Hold my calls.” Al: “There never are any, son.”
• Bud, watching his father cross the room toward the shoe boxes: “Dad, don’t! No, Daaaaddd! Dad, noooo!”
• Peg, working the lounge: “You are who I think of when I have sex with my husband!” Then, on reaching Al: “…when I clean up the floor around the toilet.”

Notes

• Al claims he had sex with Peggy the night before the four touchdowns game.
• The supergroup the musicians form is called Old Aid, and their single, “We Are The Old,” is a parody of “We Are the World.”
• Al tries to establish his credentials by name-dropping Live Aid, which none of these performers played, and then Kool-Aid.
• Peter Noone’s Herman’s Hermits single “I’m Henery the VIII, I Am” turns up as one of Kelly’s Christmas presents three episodes later.
• A goof: Peg has already called the airline and exchanged the ticket before Al gets home to tell her he won it.