The Spinners: Pick of the Litter Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

The Spinners: Pick of the Litter Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 17, 2025

Maybe just slightly hilariously Rhino's website featuring this title advertises that one of this album's signature tunes, "Games People Play" (not the Joe South tune), was used in Grand Theft Auto IV, which may not exactly be everyone's calling card (or calling car, as the case may be) in terms of the album's actual renown. This album is often thought of as the summation of a kind of "golden period" for The Spinners (or Spinners, as this album's cover offers their name), and it bears the significant production polish of Thom Bell. This was a pretty huge smash for the band back in the day, making the Top 10 on the Billboard album charts, but perhaps just a bit surprisingly "only" getting to Number 2 on the R&B Albums chart after their previous three albums, including The Spinners: Spinners (the link points to another Quadio release from Rhino), got to Number 1. Kind of interestingly, The Spinners had relatively recently had a major hit with Dionne Warwick(e) with "Then Came You" at the time of this album's release, but Dionne is not mentioned in the credits as appearing on "Just as Long as We Have Love", the tune that closes out this album.

The album's track list can be seen in the screenshots of the disc menu I've uploaded to accompany this review.

The Spinners: Pick of the Litter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Once again as with most of the Quadio releases, the video content here is simply the static menu seen in the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review. I just mentioned in my Aretha Franklin: Aretha Live at Fillmore West Blu-ray review how Rhino's frustratingly inconsistent approach toward disc authoring vis a vis being able to change audio codecs easily is even more frustrating since they at least occasional author their discs so that the colored buttons on your remote can facilitate those changes, and hilariously this disc is authored so that the colored buttons change codecs. Adding to the positives, the song does not start over when the codec is changed (another weird bugaboo that attends some Rhino audio Blu-rays). As can be seen in the screenshots, the colors of the track names change as you cycle through.

The Spinners: Pick of the Litter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Spinners: Pick of the Litter features DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options. This is a rather subtly immersive quadrophonic track that may not offer some of the "showier" aspects of more widely directional Quadio releases, but which nicely splays both vocals and instruments around the soundstage, I'd argue somewhat equally a lot of the time between all four channels. There are some clear moments of separation, with the piano in the rear channels and guitar in the front channels in "Games People Play", or the oboe emanating from the rear speakers in "Just as Long as We Have Love", to cite just two examples, but you can often hear more or less equal mixes of vocals and instruments pouring out of all four speakers simultaneously.

The Spinners: Pick of the Litter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As with every Quadio release I've reviewed, there is no on disc supplemental material. The insert booklet recreates the original album's cover information, while offering the Quadio standbys of a picture of the boxes holding the master tapes, as well as Rhino's typical verbiage on setup.

The Spinners: Pick of the Litter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While they would continue to chart actually pretty consistently for several years after the release of this album, and even continue their collaboration with Thom Bell for at least a little while after this album came out, Pick of the Litter perhaps ironically is kind of a perfect title for an album that seems to summarize the apex of The Spinners' smooth and soulful style. This is an extremely polished effort that may frankly not have a lot of perceived "grit", but which is still a sterling example of suave soul. Recommended.