LAST FAST RIDE: THE LIFE, LOVE AND DEATH OF A PUNK GODDESS
Lilly Scourtis Ayers makes her feature film debut with Last Fast Ride, just as Andrea Blaugrund Nevins made hers with The Other F Word.
The former, however, is a scrappier, more downbeat affair. Depending on your perspective, that makes it even more punk, both in terms of content and presentation, though three of the same bands have connections to the two indie documentaries (and I don't mean "scrappy" as in amateurish; the film is just less polished, in keeping with the brash subject matter).
In this case, the Los Angeles-based filmmaker turned to Rancid's Tim Armstrong for commentary and Black Flag's Henry Rollins for narration, while the other film features Rancid's Lars Frederiksen and Black Flag's Ron Reyes. The Other F Word also features U.S. Bombs' Duane Peters. Though he doesn't appear in Last Fast Ride, Peters released a 2004 collection of Anderson's work with Bay Area band the Insaints.
If you've never heard of the Insaints, join the club. If you were living in San Francisco from 1990-94, though, I don't see how you could have missed them. Anderson's then-boyfriend, Tim Yohannan, founded 924 Gilman Street, the Berkeley Mecca where her group played gigs with Armstrong after his segue from Operation Ivy to Rancid.
He became a fan and issued a single on his Hellcat label, one of their few releases, which is unfortunate, but better than nothing (on the evidence of this film, the Five Fingers material should probably stay buried).
If most of the men in The Other F Word came from broken homes, Anderson, who grew up in Monterey, CA suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father, followed by a blur of suicide attempts and stays in psych wards and group homes. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she found a sanctuary of sorts with her supportive grandparents in Modesto, CA where she formed the Insaints. The pretty high school student became an imposing punk rocker with towering blond spikes before trying a Mohawk on for size.
After they relocated to San Francisco in 1990, though, she seemed to take more style cues from Bettie Page than Nina Hagen or Wendy O. Williams (in an archival interview, she also cites GG Allin as an influence).
Anderson then took up with a man named Kal, became pregnant and had a child, which her grandparents would eventually adopt. Though the relationship didn't last, she and her daughter, Hannah, would remain close.
Somewhere along the way, she became a dominatrix, a vocation that found its way into the Insaints' stage act as she would disrobe, make out with other women, and engage in a variety of Karen Finley-type sex acts with bananas, prompting the attention of the State of California and inspiring puntastic headlines like The San Francisco Chronicle's 1993 "PERFORMER ON TRIAL: Slippery Rights Issue In Berkeley Banana Case."
After a protracted court battle, Anderson won, and the show went on.
In the process, though, she broke up with Yohannon, who had also launched the infamous punk zine Maximum Rocknroll in 1982. Yohannan succumbed to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1998, and Anderson stuck by him until the end.
Later, she moved to Los Angeles, took up with Danielle Bernal Santos, and joined the Thrillkillers. On the side, she worked as a stripper, which may be how--or at least when--she got involved with heroin, since none of her friends were users. In fact, they claim they didn't know about her habit until it was too late. And that's where the story ends. It isn't a happy one, but I might never have heard of Marian Anderson otherwise.
As far as I can tell, she could sing and she could write, and if she had had a greater interest in a conventional recording career, she might have become a bigger star—she certainly had the charisma—but that doesn't seem to have been her intention. Friends believe she performed because she felt she had no choice, but I don't know whether she found it cathartic or not.
Based on the drugs, the alcohol, the cutting, and the 20 suicide attempts, I can only conclude that it wasn't cathartic enough, but maybe she wouldn't have lasted as long without it. Marian Anderson was 33 when she died.
*Yes, she shared a name with the opera singer. This Anderson was born Marian Holloway.
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