Affinity

I think Affinity started in 1998, it could have been late 1997. Kevin, Jason, and I played together in a band in junior high called Manifest. At some point we switched from more straight ahead pop punk to playing hardcore. Kevin was the one that really got us into hardcore. He got into hardcore through this guy, Dave Corey.
Jason met Shawn and Arian in a class at school called Garage Band. People could sign up for it and then play music. It sounded cool, but I never took it.
We recorded what was essentially a demo. I have 3-31-99 written in the CDR sleeve. If I recall we recorded and mixed everything in a weekend. Jason's neighbor had a project studio in his basement. Once we were done with the recording we made some tapes that got sent to promoters to get shows. We burned some CDRs and sold those at shows, although I'm pretty sure we just gave burned cds to all our friends to listen to.
I'm not sure how we got hooked up with him, but there was this guy named Charlie Elgart who was our engineer. He was a jazz guy from New York. We recorded later in 2000 with him at a studio in Hudson. There are some photos on the Affinity Photos page of our time at this studio. Its kind of funny now looking back, we wanted to thank all of our friends who came to shows and hung out with us. Those email addresses are pretty hilarious too.
I also remember we played a show in Chicago at this place called the A Zone. We didn't have vehicles or driver's licenses, so Jason's step dad and his friend Ozzy drove us to Chicago with all our gear. Ozzy smoked stogies the entire trip and ate beef jerky. It was pretty cool of them to drive us there.