The Vault: It’s A Wide World Of Wonder

Every once in a while, Idolator reaches into its vast record-collection vaults for a feature we’ve imaginatively titled The Vault. Today’s entry is another from Peter Rubin, a man who spent four years studying how to sing in the key of life:

What with the whole iPods-supplanting-DJs phenomenon that’s been going on for too many years now, it’s a breath of fresh-to-death air to experience the crate-digging skills of people who actually know what they’re doing. To wit: Fondle ‘Em founder/OG sneakerhead Bobbito Garcia and onetime Rawkus signee/man-about-town DJ Spinna, who put their mammoth vinyl libraries together back around the fin de siècle to spit out the commercially invisible and legally unsound Wonder Wrote It collection. The two-disc set of Wondernalia (a broad category that includes live cuts, Stevie-written songs like the Pointer Sisters’ “Sleeping Alone,” and selections credited to a dyslexia-friendly alter-ego named Eivets Rednow) represented the duo’s jaw-dropping curatorial tendencies and blew many a ’70s baby’s mind. Amazon lists the thing as “Import Only,” which sure wasn’t the case at Fat Beats in the halcyon days when yours truly found it, but it also sounds like a Jeff Bezos euphemism for “try BitTorrent, because I most assuredly do not have my ears to the street.”

The Pointer Sisters – Sleeping Alone [MP3, link expired] Elvets Rednow (Stevie Wonder) – How Can You Believe [MP3, link expired]