The genius behind Vulfpeck and their social media brilliancy is Jack Stratton. Stratton likes to share things. Music, words, videos, content content content. This is how it’s always been, but some of us are only just catching on. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find some of the best gems in the deepest corners of the Internet. Whether or not they are meant to be found, we will never know. (I’m looking at you, DJ Paradiddle).
While posted in October of 2015, this excerpt from Vulfmon is ever-so relevant. Paired with the anthemic “Christmas In L.A.”, Stratton writes The ‘Santa Clause’ Loopehole: Earlier this year I was denied Israeli citizenship. Read the glory:
My maternal bloodline wasn’t Jewish. Apparently my dad wasn’t Jewish either. He had misheard an uncle at a young age.
The crisis was consuming all my mental real estate. I confided in a friend. He recommended a good lawyer.
“You’re a songwriter?” the lawyer asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you notable? You write using traditional song structure? You know, verse, chorus type stuff?”
“Yes.”
The lawyer looked up over his glasses. “I have good news. Hidden in the citizenship legislation there’s a loophole. It’s referred to as the ‘Santa Clause’; it states that if you pen a Top 40 Christmas song, you’ll be granted immediate Israeli citizenship. It’s considered the purest act of Judaism in the modern world. Irving Berlin (“White Christmas”), Mel Tormé (“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”), Johnny Marks (“Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”) . . . These are great Jews!”
The lawyer wished me luck and handed me David T. Walker’s phone number.
Vulfpeck – “Christmas in L.A.”
In an interview with Theo Katzman, he told us “For ‘Christmas in L.A.’, we had an instrumental, and Jack was like, ‘I’m hearing like na-na-nana-nana-da-da-da-dee-dada-da Christmas!’ and I remember being like, ‘Aw man, that’s just like a steady stream of 16th notes. That’s just so many words. I don’t know if I can do that. Whatever.’ Then I forgot about it and it came to me one day, and I was like, ‘All the little children and all the big children, it’s Christmas!’ Anyway, that was a collaborative thing, and then I wrote the verses for that one ahead of time.” Read the full interview, about what it means to be Vulfpeck, here.
[Originally published 12/22/18]