| Live! Like a Garage Band!
In mid 2004, the ensemble of musicians known as “Samurai Sorcerers” decided to some of the more FUN musical activities for the band…They would do “starving artist” gigs and perform their musical work in a street corner in Downtown SF or for Patrick’s drama class back at school. At some gigs, Patrick brought along with him an OLD boombox to tape the performances the whole band did. The quality of these live bootleg recordings of the Samurai Sorcerers’ “starving artist” gigs were poor, but some managed to be showcased via internet.
The Samurai Sorcerers planned a live EP/VCD for the famous “starving musicians” tour in May-June 2004, but plans were cancelled.
On May 31, 2004, two of the aspiring musicians/artists from the band Patrick and Mayumi went to the record shop at Haight-Ashbury called Amoeba Music to see J-Pop singer Nami Tamaki live for a free concert. After the musical performance from the great Japanese pop idol, an autograph session was held and both members of the Samurai Sorcerers got Nami Tamaki’s CD “Greeting” which they bought at the store that day signed, and left home happy.
That diary and memorable event in Patrick Lew’s life and music led to the band to write the song “Tokyo Pop Princess” as an ode to that real-life “dear diary” moment on the band’s online journals. It eventually became the Samurai Sorcerers FIRST big and well-known song from their catalog of musical work.
Psychotic Love
The band took the whole summer of 2004 off as Patrick graduated from Wallenberg High School and went to community college at City College of San Francisco (Eddie would go there 2 years later). Mayumi went on a family trip to Japan and Eddie focused on other musical projects. Patrick was unaware at the time that his good musician friend and bandmate from Samurai Sorcerers, Eddie, was either uninterested in doing an ALTERNATIVE project to Samurai Sorcerers. So Patrick placed an ad on Craigslist.org to create that idea.
It didn’t work anyhow. Patrick’s plan for the alternate band and project to Samurai Sorcerers didn’t go as planned. But a change in the musical group’s roster would occur.
Mayumi left the band on August 22, 2004, focusing more on education and college. Her bass playing role was left vacant for a few months…But Eddie and Patrick decided to go back to the local music store and prepare themselves for a memorable band practice and “live-in-the-house” musical performance at Patrick’s house on September 12, 2004 which this famous jam session became broadcasted as an Internet-only Samurai Sorcerers live concert for the fans on their personal webpage. Shortly after this, Eddie’s good friend and talented artist Shanti Blacharski joined the Samurai Sorcerers band camp on bass as the NEW but talented musician in the band’s ever-changing lineup.
At the time, the Samurai Sorcerers became split into 2 different musical projects. The Samurai Sorcerers band itself was indeed Patrick Lew’s solo project as Patrick, Eddie and Shawn would try to CREATE a rock n’ roll supergroup of musician friends from the CITY through the band/music geeks club. Some time around October 2004, two session musicians recruited from the band’s MySpace social-networking music webpage Janet Wang (DJ) and Mony Ngin (Drums) joined the Samurai Sorcerers for an “online musical/band collaboration.”
Although the musicians were not in the room inside the home studio at the same time, the five musicians as Samurai Sorcerers still played music together and recorded their musical instruments through the 4-track computer studio console separately for the “Psychotic Love” album. Also…Mayumi’s bass parts that were recorded also were kept in the band practice vaults as the band’s diaries and master tapes of their music were kept in there before release.
On October 23, 2004, minus Janet and Mony since they were ONLINE friends of the rock n’ roll band, the Samurai Sorcerers group project went into Eddie’s house to record some songs for an ALTERNATE band project to Samurai Sorcerers which Eddie and Patrick planned to do during the formation of their very own musical group Samurai Sorcerers’ most famous incarnation of its musicians. The friends made music at Eddie’s home in San Francisco and had dinner at a Taco Bell fast food outlet, but the album remained unfinished and kept in the library until May 2005.
For the rest of 2004 and early 2005, the one-man band version of Samurai Sorcerers begun to occur as Patrick Lew went to community colleges, Haight-Ashbury stores and Balboa High to a live tour in support the upcoming “Psychotic Love” album. “Psychotic Love” was finally ready and released for fans on the internet on DMD websites like SoundClick.com on December 6, 2004. This demo tape became the band’s 1ST official studio album, the music was a mix of all styles the band were influenced by from the music they got on iTunes or at a record store. The unique musical fusion of electronica, hard rock and teen pop became the centre of Samurai Sorcerers sound.
On February 13, 2005, the one-man musical group version of Samurai Sorcerers made their last stop on the “Psychotic Love” tour at Balboa High. This day also marked a beginning of an on-and-off again love & romance relationship Patrick Lew had with a Japanese woman named Yoshiko Kuwamoto.
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