John Mckaig Spotlight – Better Late Than Never

A few weeks back, you may recall a bevvy of Earth Crisis and Cabal gear hitting ebay.Along with a ton of mid 90s gold. All from the seller jmmckaig. John is a friend of ours and not to sound too goofy, but a friend of the scene. This dude puts in a lot of miles and a lot of pixels. You may have seen his photos gracing your favorite releases, posters and blogs. Or maybe you just follow him on http://mckaig.livejournal.com. Regardless, we at TTD felt he deserved a spotlight appearance because he was selling vegan straight edge gold. Sadly, his email got stuck in our spam filters (must have been that LiveJournal link, John … ;) ). We posted a lot of his auctions, but never got the spotlight out there. But here it is. Enjoy.

1. How did you get started in the punk/ hardcore scene?

Well, I started in the scene just like alot of people … I met some kids in Syracuse in 1988/89 who were doing shows and being punk in general (in a positive, political way), and I just really gravitated towards them. They are still friends today, and still involved in punk and hardcore, and still doing positive, political things (Niels Hobbs, Noah Cunningham, DJ Rose, Karl Buechner). We were luck to have found each other, in a sense, since it was those people and others who keep things going so long in Syracuse.

2. How did you amass all these amazing tees?

The t-shirts came when bands would come to Syracuse to play. We were just lucky, I think, that alot of bands came through Syracuse from NYC and Boston and Philly and DC … I also made a point to treat bands well when they were there – to pay them what they deserved, to give them a place to stay, food to eat, all that. So, I think that bands were grateful and I started getting shirts from bands as a “thank you”.

3. What’s the strongest memory attached to one of these shirts (like a great show, or a funny merch table discussion)?

The best story that’s shirt related is … well, I think that the big show in Syracuse in October of 93 was one of the biggest shows I had done up to that time, and I remember getting so many shirts that day – Outspoken, Earth Crisis, Bloodlet, Chokehold, Framework, plus a few more i can’t remember right now. Plus, that was a show when kids actually flew to Syracuse from Europe just to see a show, which totally blew me away. A couple of those guys are still some of my best friends now – Tom Kyo from Denmark, Inti Carboni from Rome. Another big show that I remember getting amazing shirts from was when Sick of It All, H2O, Civ and Black Train Jack played. NYC all over the place. That was an amazing show.

One more thing … DJ and Guav started Cabal, and then invited me to join them, which turned out to be an amazing and too-short-lived experience. We printed some amazing shirts (some of which are on my Ebay auction), and I can remember printing some of those great EC and other band’s shirts up in our little closet with our four color printer and little flash dryer, washing out the screens in the bathtub in the room next to us, which we were renting from our friend Dave who ran Sunspot skate shop. Dave now does the websites for Trustkill and other labels.

…

There you have it. Good dude. NBD.