A.B. Vidal… Revealed!

What Singular Mind Guides The World Through The Imaginary Realms of Gnarls Barkley?

originally published March 14, 2007

In theory, the desk of A.B. Vidal sits at the center of St. Elsewhere, the imaginary home of idiosyncratic pop duo Gnarls Barkley. Here, surrounded by Intellivision boxes and army boots, Vidal works away at his desk, writing an online journal for the millions of Gnarls Barkley fans who come to the band's website looking for tour dates, the "Smiling Faces" video or how to download the inescapable hit, "Crazy."

What fans find instead, right above the band's "official news," is A.B. Vidal's blog, where he waxes poetic about his coastal childhood, his predilection for watermelon soup, and his successful re-election campaign as chief executive, all in a strange, avuncular tone, more reminiscent of Kafka's Josef K. than Cee-Lo.

Vidal's is an oddly-placed voice, a fully realized existential character on the splash page of an incredibly popular dance band, but like most of the juxtapositions related to Gnarls Barkley, the oddity is perfect, and the feature is incredibly popular, generating hundreds of comments and developing into a world all its own.

Not surprisingly, the real desk of A.B. Vidal - where the ideas for St. Elsewhere's bPhone, (a combination cell phone and Big Mouth Billy Bass) and the unofficial St. Elsewhere Flag (a dark green windsock) come from - is not actually in the center of an imaginary island nation, but rather in a first-floor apartment in Chicago's Humboldt Park.

Here, flanked by old paperbacks and a futon covered with cat hair, former Athenian, Splash Conception frontman, WUOG station manager and Flagpole contributing writer Emerson Dameron sits, listening to old funk records and trying to imagine what might go through the mind of Vidal, a character he talks about with a fondness normally reserved for what the rest of us call "real people."

A.B. Vidal is a character Dameron has had in mind since childhood, but one that hadn't had a chance to live outside of Dameron's head until recently, when he became "chief executive of St. Elsewhere."

"I imagined an overlooked island republic that's calm, tolerant and also a bit creepy," Dameron says of St. Elsewhere, "and A.B. seemed like the perfect civic leader for such a place: patient and worldly, but excruciatingly oblivious about certain things."

Dameron-as-Vidal stumbled into his chief executive job last year, when he got a call from Brian Burton (AKA DJ Danger Mouse) asking Dameron to write some press materials for the then-upcoming Gnarls Barkley album titled St. Elsewhere .

Dameron and Burton had met at UGA in 1999, when Dameron was the manager of WUOG and Burton hosted the "Halftime Hip-Hop Show" there. They quickly became friends, exchanging records and dating tips at the Blind Pig Tavern and the Manhattan.

"He took his show more seriously than most of the deejays there," Dameron explains, "but at the same time, he seemed to have more fun with it. He would hang out during my office hours, and I would hang out during his show. I think we find humor in a lot of the same stuff. And I love Portishead's album Dummy , which is a requirement for Brian's friendship."

From there, the two went their separate ways - Dameron to Chicago and Burton to London and then Los Angeles, where he became instantly famous for his Grey Album mash-up of Jay-Z and the Beatles.

Burton and Dameron exchanged an email or two in the intervening years, with Dameron remaining a fan and supporter of Danger Mouse, but he had no indication his talents could be used to help further the Danger Mouse juggernaut. So he was particularly excited when he got a call from Burton.

"About a year ago," Dameron says, "just as I was getting fired from my ad agency job, Brian called me up and asked if I wanted to put together a press kit. At that point, I'd been immersed in all things Gnarls for a while, so I took a long walk, stopped at a few bars and came up with the 'Who is Gnarls Barkley?' story that they eventually used in the hype materials. They liked that thing so much, they hired me to do all the press for Gnarls and Danger Mouse."

The persona of A.B. Vidal came about as an alternative to the official news on the site, a way to indulge in some of the stranger parts of Gnarls Barkley, and to give Dameron a place to play. Burton, according to Dameron, wanted something like the old "Business" columns Dameron used to write for Flagpole, but with a particular Gnarls-esque twist.

"I update the St. Elsewhere blog maybe once or twice a week," Dameron says, "The last time I did, I wanted to do something interactive, so the haiku contest was born."

Like many things related to Gnarls Barkley, the haiku contest took on a life of its own after its offhand conception. On Jan. 30, Dameron-as-Vidal asked the St. Elsewhere aficionados to send him pineapple-and-solitude themed haiku. After a week, more than a thousand entries had poured in, ranging from the pretty good ("I will alone win / Your special pineapple kiss / With my boombox glow"), to the seriously terrible ("starved in solitude / i see your pineapple stand / save me some sweet chunks"). But throughout all of the poems, there was an underlying enthusiasm to be a part of the Gnarls project, in whatever small capacity possible.

The winner: "Shingles aim downward / Hiding things in shadowed spots / Lost fruit, or reptile?" for what A.B. Vidal called its "mix of vivid imagery and cryptic suggestion."

"I'm sure I'm projecting a bit," Dameron confesses, "but I think the Gnarls record brings out the sadness and weirdness in people who normally wouldn't indulge those aspects of themselves."

One of the clear messages from Gnarls Barkley's music is that indulgence in weirdness and sadness can often lead to incredible bursts of creativity. The risks Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo take as a band inspire people to not just dance, but create whole new worlds to dance in.

"The blog gives them a chance to do it," Dameron agrees, "albeit in an absurd, roundabout way."

Absurd and roundabout is, naturally, how everyone ends up in St. Elsewhere.

Travis Nichols

Emerson Dameron holds court as A.B. Vidal at www.gnarlsbarkley.com.