And the music?

"It's for unity, a way of experiencing the spiritual satisfaction of being together through music," she explained.

Further down the median, a man standing before a 30-foot-long inflatable missile shouting about America's defense spending saw his audience slowly dwindle. Many snuck away to catch glimpses of Corpzilla and its muddy message.

Corpzilla is a flatbed truck with a mud-wrestling ring and a cab transformed through paint and papier mache into a flaming dragon head.

Corpzilla's organizers say it is also a protest against the corruption of politics by corporate and special interest money, one of the foremost complaints in Philadelphia this week, a cause around which both Republican Senator John S. McCain and artist Melina Hammer can rally.

On the truck's bed, in a shallow pool of mud, a rather canine-looking man with a mud-caked beard grappled with a fellow in a two-piece bathing suit.

A woman jumped from the platform and cleared the muck from her cheeks, revealing elaborate tigress facepaint above her red sequined tanktop.