Concert review: The Nightwatchman's Justice Tour

Have you heard the one about Sen Dog -- the Cypress Hill rapper who isn't B-Real -- rockin' a cover of House of Pain's "Jump Around" with Breckin Meyer ("Road Trip") on drums, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello on guitar, Chicago vet Mars Williams on sax and Perry Farrell awkwardly singing backup? How about the one about rapper "Boots" Riley of The Coup laying down a verse during Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" while Ben Harper, Shooter Jennings and Wayne Kramer of MC5 all sing along?

No joke. That's just a snippet of the scene Thursday night at a sold-out Park West, when Morello (as his solo artist alter-ego, The Nightwatchman) hosted the last night of his Justice Tour, a combination of rotating artists you would never, ever imagine playing together, appearing for cheap (tickets were only $10) and donating all the proceeds to benefit various charitable and activist organizations.

The show was very much an example of preaching to the choir, as Morello offered not-so-fresh statements about the Iraq war and the administration's mixed-up motives and other viewpoints of which the audience clearly didn't need much convincing. But aside from a political rally of questionable effectiveness, the non-stop, nearly four-hour event was also a heck of a party, ranging from solo rap-poetry from Riley to thick blues-funk from Harper and the Innocent Criminals, from harmonica-and-guitar boogies from Chicago's Ike Reilly to Farrell busting out inevitable renditions of Porno for Pyros' "Tahitian Moon" and Jane's Addiction's "Jane Says." When nearly everyone involved banded together for the final few songs to cover stuff like "Fortunate Son" and "Rockin' in the Free World," the choices were predictable but the execution was solid, if not a little amusing at the incongruity of the people on stage. (Note: Breckin Meyer, not a bad drummer. Really.)

Essentially, before the Justice Tour there would have been no reason to think that all of these people would be in the same place, other than in your dreams. (And, if that, the kind of dream from which you wake up and just go, "Huh?"). Call it surreal, call it absurd, or call it a once in a lifetime experience. If nothing else, the next time I'm standing around at a concert, bored with an indie buzz band that fails to connect on stage, I'll wonder why all shows can't be so messy, hilarious and excitingly bizarre.