All Summer Long

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Werewolves of Alabama
OK, here goes... "All Summer Long" isn't a complex masterpiece that takes time to unravel, but perhaps a Midwest - or to be more precise - Michigan mindset is a prerequisite to actually "getting" it, let alone liking it. We tend to take summer seriously in the mitten state, not so much enjoying it as attacking it with all the subtlety of hyenas on a wildebeest since the season (usually Memorial Day through Labor Day - a little longer if we're lucky) is usually gone much too soon - in a blink some might argue - giving way to a beautiful, crisp fall and, inevitably, a very ugly winter. If you've lived here as long as I have, any shooda-dones, shooda-wents, and shooda-dranks fall on deaf ears. The apotheosis of the entire Michigan summer experience are weekend treks "up north" -roughly speaking, that section of the state north of an imaginary east-west line that connects Bay City (yes, THAT Bay City) to Stony Lake - where the air is clear, the water clean, and the stars bright, where those who grow weary of Detroit's urban squeeze and endless days of feeding the industrial beast go to decompress. Some never come back. Lucky bastards... And this is where "All Summer Long" unravels...um...unfolds, Kid Rock glorifying the practice of musical thievery (hey, it's part of the job description) by pillaging the estates of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Warren Zevon, riveting "Sweet Home Alabama" to "Werewolves of London" and waxing nostalgic about girls, fishing, campfires, and drinking. If he'd only managed to wedge in a reference to pontoon boats, he'd have nailed Shangri-la in four minutes and change. "All Summer Long" finds the Kid at a crossroads, torn between targeting MILF's, dewy eyed and beer bottles aloft in sozzled tribute to the glory days of Bob Seger, and pandering to backward-ball-capped wiggers thirsting for hard-porn rhymes. For now, this will do.