That's it! I really got to get Yukihiro Takahashi's（高橋幸宏）first solo album "Saravah!"（サラヴァ!）from June 1978. I've totally fallen in love with his "La Rosa", one of the tracks, and with "Sunset" already up on the blog, "Saravah!" can easily make me forget that Takahashi was the drummer for the legendary technopop band Yellow Magic Orchestra.
It's class all the way with "La Rosa", a heady mixture of jazz and 1970s City Pop that was written by Takahashi and composed by Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）, the same fellow who created a Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）classic (and no, it's not "Plastic Love") and a famous anison. The intro even actually launched a thrill up my back before completely relaxing me, and there's something about Takahashi's crooning vocals that reminds me of Akira Terao（寺尾聡）. The singer's YMO bandmate, Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, did all of the arranging for the keyboards, so that organ which comes in and out throughout "La Rosa" simply slammed onto my nostalgia nerve.
According to the J-Wiki article on "Saravah!", the other member of YMO, Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, along with Kato, Masayoshi Takanaka（高中正義）and Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）were involved. I would especially like to know who was on each instrument in the recording of "La Rosa". To be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of Takahashi's voice whenever he sang any of the YMO tunes, but it seems to fit in better here with his more urban contemporary material.
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