Throughout the years I have read all sorts of things about my personal history, and the history of my band, Samurai Sorcerers. Most of it was inaccurate and taken out of context. For this reason I decided to write my own story. This is how I am going to write my story by memory and deep thought.



I was just a struggling guitarist and musician trying to get myself heard throughout the local Bay Area music scene. I first enrolled myself to study some books on the electric guitar at 14 when I got my first electric guitar from my mother. When I was 15 however, I posted an ad on the SF Chronicle to start my first band Famiglia with a few egotistical musicians. Famiglia consisted the cream of the crop of amateur musicians and we mostly played pop-punk music. It was a very short-lived band in the SF scene, and we sort of ended up disbanding before we could even make a home recording together in the garage. Around that time, I stopped playing guitar because when I was playing music in Famiglia, I've received lots of harsh criticism from one of my bandmates and it was a very uncomfortable environment for me to play music with these guys inside the garage because, now and then I would receive harsh words my bandmates in Famiglia. I took up bass and bought one at a music store and learned how to play it on my own, but in any case I switched from rhythm guitar to bass before I got fired from Famiglia by the band's guitarist. I've never seen or heard from those guys ever again after I left the band, and I don't know if they even still play music together as Famiglia.



I stopped playing guitar for awhile and I didn't touch my hands on the six-string axe known for rock and roll guitar solos for quite some time because of my rampant failures and feedback I've gotten playing rhythm guitar in the band Famiglia, so I resumed my academic studies at Wallenberg High. There when I wasn't known as Patrick Lew, the musician. I was known as a troubled teenager losing his sense of Asian pride and losing awareness in his own Asian traditions and culture. I had many friends at Wallenberg High, but I was also a very troubled teen. I had a high school sweetheart who I've long been separated and estranged from, her name was Amy.

So things were about to change for the better I hope when it came to playing music and enthralling the audience with my rhythm guitar playing skills and songwriting abilities. One afternoon before classes ended at Wallenberg, I snuck into the school's tiny auditorium and saw a great pre-teen rock band performed. These two guys that would make up the classic line-up in my J-Rock band Samurai Sorcerers were only freshmen, while I was a junior at Wallenberg High. After the show, I met my friend and Samurai alumni Eddie Blackburn for the first time and he carried with him a classic red Les Paul guitar and he put his guitar down and we started talking about music we were into and our lives as musicians. It wasn't long before we decided to form and establish a J-Rock garage band together. I can't remember what year it was exactly, but I believed it was Spring 2003 semester at Wallenberg High. I was persuaded to learn how to play guitar better and I took three guitar theory lessons from a guy named Ahmed Drief at Vibo Music, a school near my house. I also lived near City College of San Francisco which was a 15-minute MUNI bus ride, but when I enrolled there I absolutely dreaded the whole community college I was going to.

So me and Eddie formed our J-Rock garage band Samurai Sorcerers (later to reunite briefly to be billed under the banner Silent Minister Experience in May-June 2005) along with my sort of ex-girlfriend from Wallenberg at the time Mayumi on bass. When Samurai Sorcerers played live onstage or recorded demos inside my home studio Silent Minister Productions, we would also take time to do things separately. Me and Mayumi went to go see Nami Tamaki live in person for a free concert at Amoeba Records, and that inspired me to write, record and perform Tokyo Pop Princess on Samurai Sorcerers' home-made studio demo. I went to a music store and bought me my new guitar (Epiphone Les Paul) with the Chinese New Year money my mother gave me during Lunar New Year for the Chinese people. Samurai Sorcerers is just a band where it's mostly all about me, Patrick Lew. The musicians involved were what most thought of as session musicians or sidemen, but even if it is mainly a Patrick Lew show it still has the contributions on the other musician's part.



So me, Eddie and Mayumi billed as Samurai Sorcerers headed into my home studio Silent Minister Productions to record some demos we might put on our webpage. But soon afterwards Mayumi left the Samurai to resume her studies at Wallenberg to get into a UC college, leaving the Samurai without a bassist. Me and Eddie continued performing as Samurai Sorcerers in my home studio but some mistakes were made when reassembling the lineup. You guys might have heard of MySpace to meet peeps on the internet, and I placed an ad on various clubs on MySpace to hire session musicians for the making of Samurai Sorcerers' demo and to do some collaborating in my home studio, but I hired two Asian girls I knew from MySpace to do session collaboration.

Eddie and I took a break and we tried working on forming a follow-up band to Samurai Sorcerers called the Silent Minister Experience. Eddie told me, if I wanted to go J-Rock and All Things Japanese in Samurai Sorcerers, we can also start a true rock and roll band without those Asian girls involved. Thus begins the Silent Minister Experience. On October 23, 2004 if I can remember, just one year ago exactly...the Experience went inside Eddie's bedroom to record a proposed demo for Experience. The Silent Minister Experience consisted of me, Eddie and his friend Shawn. So just week before my 19th birthday, I called Eddie up and asked how the Experience band will finish the demo. Eddie didn't seem too enthusiastic but that was the end of the whole Experience gig.



The Experience did got back together for one month only in May 2005 when I called Eddie up to jam on guitars and play music together, but it didn't work out as I'd expected because most of him and his friends' musical pursuits were in the band Sapien. So I placed an ad on MySpace's Musicians Exchange to hire a replacement guitarist for Eddie in the Samurai Sorcerers but to no avail. So me and the Samurai finished the demo, and we put it on our webpage. I still carry on the Samurai Sorcerers banner and catalog as my main band, and it will forever remain my main band when I am not playing any instrument in any other garage band. I haven't spoken to Samurai alumni's in quite a long time though. I wish them best of luck though. I will be forming a brand new band with some high school pals called The Original Rock Musicians (T.O.R.M) real soon though. My buddy and T.O.R.M frontman Gray Eser is looking for musicians to join the group through ads on Craigslist and searching dudes and chicks from other bands.

Listening To Music, Animation, Martial Arts, Gothic Subculture, Import Cars, Japan, Asian Stuff, Studying Japanese, Going Out W/ The Crew, Talking With Friends, PS2 Games, Going Online, Astrology, Watching My DVDs, Playing With My Cat, Speaking Japanese & Cantonese, J-Pop, 60's Pop Culture, 80's Pop Culture, Collecting CD's And Magazines, Reading, Writing My Xanga W/ Interesting Stories And Blog Entries, Playing Guitar W/ Grinding Distortion, Having Likes/Dislikes About Society, Staying Away From Any Harmful Drug, Movie Producing, Intellectual females (Not necessarily required, but at least the considerate non-negative nancy ones!) Dressed In Many Different Styles (Includes Japanese Street Fashion, Hard Rock, Casually Dressed 30-Year Old Asian Man), Making Music (Sorta hard but I try my best.), Acting. And Being Just The Silent Minister...

the beatles, guns n roses, nirvana, slash's snakepit, enuff z' nuff, poison, christian death, slayer, KMFDM, ministry, x-japan, malice mizer, l'arc~en~ciel, samurai sorcerers, john lennon, paul mccartney & wings, the ramones, the clash, sex pistols, rolling stones, the who, the velvet underground, MC5, the stooges, new york dolls, the doors, motley crue, winger, ozzy osbourne, black sabbath, led zeppelin, lillix, robert johnson, buddy holly, johnny cash, AFI (old), black flag, the casualties, izzy stradlin & the ju ju hounds, beyond (HK), asian kung-fu generation, INXS, elton john, the monkees, jimi hendrix, van halen, samantha 7, brides of destruction, night ranger, burzum, mayhem, dimmu boggir, crade of filth, november's doom, cathedral, sioxsie & the banshees, duran duran, muddy waters, pearl jam, screaming trees, alice in chains, soundgarden, oasis, silverchair, bush, john lee hooker, U2, sonny boy williamson, parliament, george clinton, bob marley, boxcar racer, stinking cloud, bathory, the germs, metallica (old), megadeth, ministry, dir en grey, britny fox, the cure, the replacements, bob dylan, pink floyd, boston, chicago, jefferson airplane, the grateful dead, warrant, danger danger, alice cooper, AC/DC, aerosmith

bill & ted, wayne's world, porkys, sixteen candles, exorcist 1 & 3, stigmata, lost in translation, kill bill 1 & 2, rock star, school of rock, coyote ugly, mean girls, donnie darko, city of god, battle royale I & II, ju-on: the grudge, ringu, unsolved mysteries (TV show), music movies, concert films, JFK, american graffiti, desperately seeking susan, cheap asian porn, back to the future trilogy, the matrix, airheads!, asian movies, foreign films

porno, music books, music magazines, how to books, movie magazines, political science books, video game magazines, window shop pamphlets, school pamphlets, japanese language textbooks, mangas, comic books