The All Mighty Senators is that rare thing: a new band that manages to be organically funky, different from everything that's gone before, and nasty to boot. The energy level at their shows is amazing and their musicianship slaps you in the face. Plus they cured my malaria. What more do you want? More about the malaria later. The first thing you notice about the Senators is their unusual set-up. Their lead vocalist, Landis 'Expandis' McCord, is also their drummer. If that wasn't unusual enough, Landis also drums standing up, with a unique drumkit that comes up to his chest. He sings and raps fluidly while drumming in a style that mixes ample pocket with a lot of groove. He stands in front like a lead singer, not in back like a drummer. The rest of the band is pretty amazing too, consisting of bass, guitar and a four-piece horn section. By email, I asked the Senators' bass player, Brett Sharbaugh, about why McCord set up his drum kit that way, and he responded 'Poverty; the first drum kit was suspended or supported (like stalactites and stalagmites) from whatever we could find; plenty of rebar, trashcans, and tires. 'Necessity made for a cool drum kit, though,' Sharbaugh added. 'Nobody wants to deface a set of sonors, but if your kit is 90 per cent found objects, what's the problem with treating it like visual art?' As for why McCord chose to stand up in front instead of sitting down, Sharbaugh says he and Expandis just had the preconception that the lead singer needs to 'stand up and be the front man.' The result is pretty amazing. Having seen the Senators live, I was blown away by the energy of their performances. 'We show up in one of a million moods, and play one in a million different shows,' Sharbaugh says. 'As a band, a tribe, or a horde, we rock to a point that our daily horrors and personal fears succumb to an overwhelming love of what we're doing; communicating in an inexplicable way with each other, and with a not singularly definable group of people.' On their CDs, they sound like an awesome band, but live, they're something more. It's the sheer presence of the rhythm section in your face. 'Anyone who comes to the shows knows they will experience a powerful music,' Sharbaugh says. It hits you in the face with funk. And it cured my malaria. About my malaria, then. It started as a headache, and then spread as an ache through the rest of my body. Chairman Mao's bodyguard had warned me about this, in a book I read once for my Chinese class. The bodyguard had been trapped on a freezing mountainside with Mao during the Long March when he'd come down with malaria, which started with some aches. Mao nursed him back to health while teaching him revolutionary slogans, in some very touching scenes. So I knew it was malaria that I had. About Chairman Mao. He would have strongly disapproved of the Senators' emphasis on individualism. It's the number one theme in their songs, it seems to me after repeated listens to their latest CD, "Flow". One song, "Old School", is about the oppression and conformity of high school. "Flow" is about people condemning the speaker for waving 'his flag of freedom.' And so on. Some of the lyrics are obvious, some of them are very clever, but that theme pops up again and again. So I asked Sharbaugh about this, and he said: 'individuality is not discontentment -- it's simply a description of your needs.' Society tries to tell people what they want, and get them to defer gratification until an afterlife or some other future reward, he says: 'I only preach that people preserve their own desires.' Choosing to conform, Sharbaugh says, 'is selling yourself to a partial existence; "I'll sell what I've got for your promise of what comes later.'" As for the song about horrible experiences in high school, including bullying and violence, Sharbaugh says he and Landis didn't go to the same high school, but if they had, 'I would have been the object to his subject in the song.' Another interesting song is "Poison", which Sharbaugh says is 'about the dangers of holding a belief more sacred than experience and growth. Anything that holds your mind from seeing beyond its control is degenerating. If we are trying to evolve, both personally, and socially; if we try to elevate ourselves to a point that we have strength in ourselves and at least a tolerance for each other, then we have to learn to ingest the variety of experiences that we come across in our lifetime; learn from them, grow from them, but do not be overwhelmed by new and intoxicating stimuli. Real strength comes from within.' The band has been together for about four years and has released three CDs independently, with more on the way. (I highly recommend both "An Evening With" and "Flow", although you should see the band live if you can.) Sharbaugh says they get some overseas orders for CDs, but it's 'not as big as in the States.' One Mexican DJ started playing their CD heavily and they got a ton of orders from Monterrey, and a remix of their monster jam "Sweat" is big in the UK. So check out the Senators. Hopefully, like me, you will lose your malaise, your malaria and your maladjustments. (You can check out their web site at http://www.clark.net/pub/senators.) Q & A with Brett Sharbaugh: Q: Who are your bass influences? A: Bootsy Collins, James Jamerson, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Larry Graham, Jaco, and Marcus Miller: 'Jamaaladeen came later; but Marcus came before and had more influence; (he obviously influenced Jamaaladeen, and in a much more important fashion, he influenced Miles [Davis]; Marcus took the dc/go-go shit to an extreme that made it legit in the jazz community. Miles got the credit, but . . . ' Q: Does the group write songs by jamming or just by humming in the shower (either all together or separately?) A: Yes, yes, and, well . . . yes. (We've never showered separately -- some of our girlfriends have had a problem with that. Those girls didn't last long.) Q: Would you rather be trapped in an elevator with the Tower of Power horn section or Regis & Kathie Lee? A: Let's see: a] we'd have an eight piece horn section, or b] I'm convicted of a double homicide. What's the question again? Q: Are you ambitious as a group, in terms of getting a major label record contract and being on MTV and so on? A: Would I be opposed to living comfortably? Is this a serious question? Is this interview going downhill?