Gaucho

Heard this the other day for the first time since I don't know when. What a great record. Donald Fagin and Walter Becker composed pop music like no other musicians I know. So precise. And as so often noted, so decadent. How well it seems to exemplify the zeitigest of the early eighties, and yet how different it was from the masturbatory narcicissm of disco and violent narcicissm of punk. The fusion of jazz, funk and pop was what I always wanted Chick Corea's Return to Forever to be, but just wasn't. The nod to Latin music in the title and on a few choice riffs counts for about as much here as the stylized lettering on the cover of Aja meant to Asian themes, but the musical textures on Goucho shimmer more smoothly than even their most beautiful earlier albums. And the lyrics are as strange as any, in their own understated way. Can anybody explain to me what they were getting at in following verse?

Who is the gaucho amigo
Why is he standing
In your spangled leather poncho
With the studs that match your eyes
Bodacious cowboys
Such as your friend
Will never be welcome here
High in the Custerdome. . .

On second thought, don't. But if you haven't heard this before, or in a while, do yourself a favour and give it a listen. Sure to put a smile on your face, to quote from another great song on the album.