You folks remember Mike Faloon, right? We fluffed the hell out of that guy when we reviewed his Sonic Viewfinder #1 fanzine last year, and here he is in 2026 with another fine team-up zine called Sunbeam Tiger #1. The “team-up” is with Todd Taylor, a fella from Razorcake, and each gentleman gets two at-bats to see if they can move the runners. I think they move them really well, two big bags at least.
Faloon gets the music coverage, with “coverage” being the operative word. As with Sonic Viewfinder, he takes a literary fiction approach to his subjects, blending multiple tangentially related stories and musings together into a greater whole. It’s an approach I actually like a lot if (and only if) the person behind it’s got the chops to do so. I certainly don’t. Faloon does. His piece on a heretofore unknown-to-me modern act called Black Ends weaves in and out of bits about the band; about his daughter forgetting the keys to her college storage unit; and about the career arc of The Moody Blues. It all works, and one comes to think that maybe said band’s Psychotic Spew is something one maybe ought to take a peep at.
Taylor – also an excellent writer with his own somewhat unorthodox in-and-out style – puts weak pampered elitist pricks like me to shame with his paean to “Repair” – i.e. fixing broken things yourself. For this guy, it’s not a lifestyle, it’s a life – so much so that he spends large parts of his week at a DIY bike repair collective in Los Angeles, helping to get angelenos off & riding in what might be the most bike-unfriendly city in America. I remember when we bought our home many years ago, my boss told me “You’re either going to get really good at fixing things, or really good at writing checks”. I got really good at writing checks. All Taylor’s article does – besides thoroughly entertain me – is send a big crashing guilt wave across my bow. I mean I’ve fixed the toilet a few times and I’m surprisingly good at gardening my tiny plot(s), but Taylor’s on another competence planet entirely. His closing short piece on the Sunbeam Tiger automobile is connected to the larger one, and provides this fanzine with its name.
Faloon’s other piece is on Patrick Shiroishi, who’s created some pretty crazed exploratory musics with a variety of collaborators over the past x number of years. I’m particularly fond of this one. Again, Faloon weaves in some baseball, Japanese WWII internment, and a fanzine-making project he does with the elementary school kids he teaches – which resulted in the kids actually making The Patrick Shiroishi Zine. Two thought occur naturally: one, why wasn’t Mike Faloon my elementary school teacher instead of Mrs. Sullivan, and two, can we get a copy of the Shiorishi fanzine for discussion here at Fanzine Hemorrhage?
Get your own copy of Sunbeam Tiger #1 for a hefty $2 here.
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