Inserting a record returned from a function

I have a function defined as:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION word_doc_from_raw(character varying, character
varying, bytea)
RETURNS record AS
$BODY$

SELECT ROW(
id_from_word( $1 ),
id_from_doc_name( $2 ),
$3
)

$BODY$
LANGUAGE 'sql' STABLE;

And I'm trying to INSERT the returned record into a table defined as:

CREATE TABLE word_doc
(
word_id integer NOT NULL,
doc_id integer NOT NULL,
posns bytea,
CONSTRAINT word_doc_pkey PRIMARY KEY (word_id, doc_id),
CONSTRAINT word_doc_word_id_fkey FOREIGN KEY (word_id)
REFERENCES words (word_id) MATCH SIMPLE
ON UPDATE RESTRICT ON DELETE RESTRICT
)
WITHOUT OIDS;

with the statement:

insert into word_doc ( word_id, doc_id, posns )
values( (word_doc_from_raw( 'word', 'document.name', 'some raw data' )).* )

and getting the error:

ERROR: record type has not been registered
SQL state: 42809

Does this mean I must always define a type in order to do anything useful with a
record returned from a function?
I've seen references in the docs to "casting" and a syntax like:

ROW( ...)::tag

Is this useful in this situation?

Cheers, buk.