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The Commodores: 'Easy' like $60 Million

Steven X Rea, High Fidelity, April 1980

TOMMY McCLARY, his white Adidas pressed up against the sound-booth glass, sits in an insulated cubicle adjoining the studio control room eliciting a succession of country licks from the acoustic guitar on his lap. He is overdubbing a part for the intro to 'Wake Up Children', a song on the Commodores' newest LP, scheduled for April release. Reclining behind the 24-track console at Motown's Hollywood studio, the group's coproducer James Carmichael — a wry, wizened black man in his middle forties — lights another in a seemingly endless chain of cigarettes, pushes his glasses up along his nose, and shakes his head ruefully. "Tommy, that sounds like some kind of slide guitar or something. What are you doin'?"

Total word count of piece: 2186

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