Posted by  Patrick in on July 26, 2007 at 1:17 AM
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A long-time musician/artist and rock & roll fan growing up in the Bay Area, Patrick Lew made his musical debut in 1998, in a couple Bay Area local bands. Playing guitar with a couple of local Bay Area bands that did not even last long-term than most musicians expected in the local Bay Area music scene. Patrick began showcasing his music on the internet in the summer of 2000, a couple of home-made demos with him playing guitar and singing his songs on a cassette player. Those pre-Samurai Sorcerers musical resume would be known as "Band of Asians" when Patrick went solo again, in 2006. He began receiving tutelage in playing guitar with an instructor by the name of Ahmed Drief at Vibo Music Center near Patrick’s house in San Francisco.
It wasn’t until October 2002 when Patrick was inviting his friends from Wallenberg High to form a rock & roll group called “Samurai Sorcerers” which would propel his musician life to a success. Patrick’s high school friends Eddie Blackburn and Asuka “Mayumi” Nagase joined the Samurai Sorcerers as musicians, and received training in the Patrick Lew dojo of music. On October 22nd, the local GarageBand musicians got together at Guitar Center for their first band practice in which Patrick purchased his first bass guitar for Mayumi at the music store.
On May 10, 2003, the Samurai Sorcerers made their debut at Wallenberg High’s Asian American assembly in which Patrick announced to the high school crowd his new project. They would spend the next few months performing in street corners and local recreational centers before taking on other ambitions and activities in their music. Around the summer of 2003, the Samurai Sorcerers (on their own music/band website) put out a demo called "Live! Like a Garage Band" which were mainly GarageBand 4-track tapes of the Samurai Sorcerers playing music together and learning how to become better as musicians and playing music in a band. However, "Live! Like a Garage Band" is now out-of-print and is a RARE collectors item since only 50 copies were made of this mixtape. Patrick Lew was only 16 when this EP was distributed on their website.
Patrick would take some time off Samurai Sorcerers for romance and dating with young girls he met off the internet. Unfortunately, this caused further delays within his own high school band’s camp and estate in order to perform together, and it ended up costing his relationship with his longtime friend Amy. More or less, Patrick developed a serious drug and depression problem afterwards.
Patrick returned to the Samurai Sorcerers with his friends Eddie and Mayumi. After working their ways towards the studio, the band began touring and playing small shows in San Francisco for the Unfinished Relics Tour in May and June of 2004. After the tour, Patrick and Mayumi of the Samurai Sorcerers band camp watched Nami Tamaki in concert at Amoeba Records. It inspired the band to pen the hit song, “Tokyo Pop Princess.” After the Unfinished Relics Tour playing music for live music events (shows) across Daly City and San Francisco in recreational centers, schools and having musical clinics jamming together at the local Guitar Center, the band decided to take a vacation from their musical resumes. Patrick also graduated from Wallenberg High School on June 3, 2004 and went to City College of San Francisco for community college before going to a bigger college/university.
While continuing to battle the scene, Mayumi left the band on August 24th to go back to school. Patrick and Eddie remained the sole leaders of the Samurai Sorcerers, and brought along their good friend Shanti Blacharski to replace Mayumi on bass guitar. Heading back into the studio, things were starting to fizzle out for the Samurai Sorcerers. Eddie and Shawn were still officially under contract to the Samurai Sorcerers camp at the tine, but were beginning to play in another band called Logic’s Enemy in the fall of 2004.
Despite the changes, the threesome managed to play rock & roll in the studio together during the remaining months of 2004. Two other backup musicians joined the gang, Mony Ngin and Janet Wang were hired abroad from the popular social-networking website MySpace.com, but were briefly in the Samurai Sorcerers to add extra layers of instruments for the “Psychotic Love” album. On October 23, 2004, the Samurai Sorcerers were in the recording studio and created their 2nd album "Blizzard of Sound" inside the workshop. The other album taken from 36 songs recorded in Patrick's home recording/music studio, was "Psychotic Love" and came out in 2004.
Eddie and Shawn were also playing music in intra-band musical side projects away from the Samurai Sorcerers to play in Logic’s Enemy’s tour on November 9th. Patrick handled the changes and went on as a lone survivor for the Psychotic Love Tour.
Meanwhile, during the Psychotic Love Tour, it proved to be a grueling test for Patrick Lew of the Samurai Sorcerers. On November 19th, he previewed his album “Psychotic Love” at the Talent Quest 2004. However on December 11th at the Ori-Wave festival, he was ejected from the concert for disturbing the peace. Controversially, he was supposedly working the concert as a front door man but felt taken advantage of by the concert’s staff. In doing so, he handed out flyers to his band to promote Samurai Sorcerers but was escorted out of the theater. The Samurai Sorcerers would play their last gig at Balboa High on February 13, 2005, with little fanfare.
But some good news came along the way. The Samurai Sorcerers estate announced that Patrick, Eddie and Shawn will reunite the band for a new studio album and hopefully a live tour. In May 2005, the group went into the studio to jam for a little bit. Adding new member Zack Huang on keyboards in the band, it seemed as if Samurai Sorcerers were back on the road to rock & roll. But unfortunately it did not turn out that way. By now, the Samurai Sorcerers had many websites on the Internet dedicated to their story, music and band.
Samurai Sorcerers continued to play music together in May-June 2005, linked in storylines with Patrick and Eddie making an appearance (along with Mayumi) at the Wallenberg High c/o 2005 graduation. Subsequent appearances by Eddie and Shawn for concerts was mostly in favor of their new band "Logic's Enemy." However on August 8, 2005, Patrick had a "falling out" with Eddie and Shawn as they were gone from the Sorcerers. While the band’s website is still available for fans, the band was now down to Patrick and Zack. At the time, Eddie and Shawn were more interested in their musical career with Logic’s Enemy. And Patrick was more interested in computers and college. Patrick would continue to go through challenges in life, Patrick and Zack played music as "Samurai Sorcerers" as they continued shopping in computer and guitar stores looking to restart the garage band all over again. The final lineup before Samurai Sorcerers split was Patrick (guitar/computers/vocals) and Zack (keyboards) and their last jam session took place in the recording studio on January 2, 2006. The Samurai Sorcerers eventually evolved into Renegade Youth as Patrick claimed ownership of his former garage band and began to build a new band around him by March 10, 2006, the blackest day in Patrick Lew's musical resume. The day when Samurai Sorcerers ceased to function in any sort of musical activity.
Prior to that, Patrick spent a vacation in Hong Kong with his family and somewhat hided himself away from the local music scene. He went to Skyline College in January 2006, and formed his new garage band, the Renegade Youth. Previously known as Band of Asians, Patrick formed the Renegade Youth as a follow-up musical project to Samurai Sorcerers. Recruiting Dave Arceo on drums, whom Patrick met at Skyline College in the computer lab. With a contract that guaranteed 100% musical freedom over his music and One Man Band, Renegade Youth began playing small shows at Skyline College and the Serramonte Shopping Mall in early 2006. The Renegade Youth also headed into various recording studios using Patrick's Bank of America credit card to record a studio album for the Renegade Youth band. Endorsed a couple musical instruments from the guitar store, Patrick returned back to the local "independent" music scene when he and Renegade Youth played a musical event at a small music school on May 8, 2006. This concert was also published on CD/MP3 on various "new" Renegade Youth band/music websites.
The lineup for Renegade Youth was Patrick Lew (guitar/computer/vocals), Dave Arceo (drums) and Augusto Hernandez (bass). However, Augusto quit the band citing "artistic differences" with Patrick and Dave around late 2006. The local garage band resourced as the "Band of Asians" would soon whittle down to just Patrick Lew doing most of the music.
However, the summer of 2006 was a period of silence for Patrick Lew as he and Renegade Youth spent much of their time in various recording studios across the City creating music for their studio album, "Revenge." This was music Patrick insisted Eddie and Shawn from Samurai Sorcerers to do back in May 2005 when they jammed inside Bank Studios, but eventually Patrick brought the instrumental tapes and notebooks to Renegade Youth instead. Spending at least several thousands of dollars on Patrick's credit card, they created the Renegade Youth studio album "Revenge." However, the new Renegade Youth band canceled upcoming live events for the fall of 2006 to finish mixing and mastering the record in the studio. "Revenge" and their May 2006 Vibo Music Center concert was eventually distributed by CDBaby.
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