WINNIPEG - Good intentions will only get you so far.

At least, that's the lesson we learned at last night's Kid Rock show, where the self-described American Badass fell just short of living up to his reputation as a rhyme-spewin', Southern-rock-adorin' good ol' boy who's gonna save the world by staging his own sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll revival.

See, where Rock (aka Detroit native Bob Ritchie) is concerned, we've always been a bit conflicted. We fully admire what he's trying to pull off -- the unironic attempts to bridge hip-hop, heavy metal and classic rock; the devil-may-care swagger and testosterone-fuelled bluster; the affable blue-collar charm; and especially the constant genuflecting at the feet of genre masters like Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and Johnny Cash.

The only problem? As a songwriter (and a singer, and a rapper), he's still got some work to do before he can join the same league as those legends, and while his "student of music" credentials are clearly in order, the music itself is something of a letdown.

For proof, look no further than his current hit All Summer Long, which Rock hauled out about half an hour into his glitzy, goofy spectacle of a show at MTS Centre last night.

The song is catchy, no doubt, but that's mostly due to the fact that Rock samples not one, but two classic rock anthems -- Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama and Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London -- fusing them into an only halfway-cohesive whole that's either touching or totally contrived, depending how much cynicism you're bringing to the table.

And for every number that worked last night -- like opener Rock N Roll Jesus, with its sleaze-rock rhythms and tambourine break; or American Badass, in which Rock pays homage to his many influences; or the gospel-tinged country-rocker Amen, which rose to a rousing crescendo -- there was another that fell kind of flat.

Anyway, the crowd of 7,000 appeared to be eating the whole thing up but for us, the high point came midway through the aforementioned number Amen, when Rock ordered everyone in the audience to turn and high-five the nearest stranger.

A touching sight (especially from five storeys up), and really, how many folks can you think of -- rocker, rapper or otherwise -- that could pull off a move like that?

Now ironically, openers Matt Mays & El Torpedo kinda bested Rock at the the Southern-rock game, even though the act hails from Nova Scotia -- about as far removed from Red State territory as you can get.

But with their ragged, rough-hewn mini-epics about devils, highways, and cocaine cowgirls, they managed to straddle the line between country and rock in a way that was riveting, not derivative.

Hopefully Kid Rock was taking notes.