Glamour Profession: The Disco-Funk of High-End Paranoia
Seven minutes of relentless groove, basketball stars, and illicit transactions. How Glamour Profession captures the dark, cocaine-fueled heart of 1980s Los Angeles.
If “Babylon Sisters” is the eviction notice, “Glamour Profession” is the frantic, chemical-fueled attempt to pack the bags before the sheriff arrives. Clocking in at over seven minutes, it is the centerpiece of Gaucho, a sprawling, relentless disco-noir epic that documents the intersection of celebrity, sports, and high-end narcotics trafficking.
It is a song that sounds exactly like its subject matter: expensive, repetitive, and increasingly paranoid.
Hoops McCann and the L.A. Concession
The lyrics introduce us to “Hoops McCann,” a basketball star turned drug mule, navigating the “L.A. concession.” The specificity is dazzling. We aren’t just dealing drugs; we are meeting at “Mr. Chow’s,” we are talking on the “car phone” (a potent status symbol in 1980), we are living the “glamour profession.”
Fagen’s lyrics capture the transactional nature of these relationships. Everyone is using everyone. The basketball star is useful only as long as he can move the product. The dealer is useful only as long as he has the “Szechuan dumplings” and the supply. It is a world devoid of friendship, run entirely on leverage and supply chains.
The Robotic Disco Pulse
The groove on “Glamour Profession” is terrifyingly consistent. It hints at disco, but it lacks the joy or the release of the genre. Instead, it offers a flat, horizontal funk that refuses to peak.
This is Wendel at its most aggressive. The drum track is a loop in the truest sense—a digital construct that hammers the listener into submission. It mimics the physiological effects of the drugs the characters are consuming: a heart rate that is elevated but steady, a sense of momentum that goes nowhere.
Against this rigid grid, Steve Khan’s rhythm guitar works overtime, providing the only organic texture in a sea of gloss. The piano solo doesn’t soar; it chatters, mirroring the endless, empty conversation of a coke binge.
Living Hard
“Living hard will take its toll,” Fagen sings, but he sounds like he doesn’t believe it. The horror of “Glamour Profession” is that the toll is invisible. The characters are beautiful, rich, and well-fed. The decay is internal.
The song doesn’t end; it fades out, suggesting that this lifestyle continues in perpetuity. The loop keeps running. The deal keeps happening. The car phone keeps ringing. It is a purgatory with excellent catering, and Steely Dan crafted the perfect, soulless soundtrack for it.