As indie band struggles, Love’s act is wearing well

“How long can you call something a comeback before you have to just call it quits?”

Robert Hilburn posed this question at the start of his review of Courtney Love in San Diego [“Who Knew She Had a Cuddly Side?” Oct. 26]. From my bowl of Cheerios, I could not evade the double irony of this statement. How long indeed?

The review was published on the same day I was to do the final mix-down on a Neil Diamond song, recorded for an indie tribute compilation to be released early next year. It’s a big step for my band, the Desperation Squad. In our 20-plus years, this song, a cover, represents the first time we will receive even (modest) national distribution of our product.

All the other accouterments of fame -- the airplay, the sponsorship, the cash advances -- are still out there in million-to-one land, a place where, if your on-call job stops contacting you for two weeks, the life raft starts to take on a little more water, and stress and distraction become part and parcel of the insurmountable odds you live by every day.

In show business, the bigger you are, like Love, certainly the harder you will fall. But your fall will at least be, at various times, softened by whatever celebrity cachet you’ve managed to build up for yourself. Courtney Love, even in free fall, is still a compelling media figure. And that in itself will keep generating additional chances for her.

But for those with no cachet, living dirt-poor in a vain attempt to somehow grasp the holy grail of mainstream success is considered, well, wholly pathetic. There’s no bronze medal for hanging in there, for coming close.

The true artist, however, knows that as long as there is a flicker of light emanating from the candle, that is reason enough to stay the course. But if you want to compete in the big time, you’ve got to have some kind of game. Everyone knows that. Resilience is OK; free fall is better.

And that’s where Courtney, whom I have never met, did Desperation Squad a great favor. The night after her arrest in New York last spring, Love went on stage at the Bowery with a defiant three-word message on her shirt that included an obscenity. The media noticed this and reported it.

Here’s the deal: That’s our foul shirt. We handmade it on my bass player Laura’s back patio. Suddenly, it’s on dozens of websites, all over television and in magazine spreads. Our stupid shirt. From a San Gabriel Valley back patio to the Bowery, though how Love got it I can only guess. I sold a couple to a hip clothes boutique on Cahuenga once, but that was in 2002.

I guarantee you this: That’s a D-Squad shirt, flung out there in the media landscape like a big old stinking cigar ad. And I was determined to cash in!

I contacted every media outlet that ran the shirt photo, and Hilburn too, and told them, “Hey, that’s our shirt,” less to crow about it than to train a spotlight on my band. I got zero response.

I know why. It’s not the message but the messenger. With no agent, manager, publicist, with no celebrity cachet, my claims of artistic triumph elicited not a shred of interest from the media, not even a “You must be lying.” Had I the clairvoyant panache to see it coming, I might have sent out a news release the week before that said, “Courtney Love to Have Nervous Breakdown in D-Squad Shirt.” And even that might not have helped.

In a business of celebrity cachet and savvy promotional slicks, it is unavoidable that worthy artists fall through the cracks. But Hilburn and other journalists should be advised that “calling it quits” is rarely a viable option, even through a lifetime of obscurity.

I remain optimistic. One more rock star wears my shirt and I get a free sandwich at my local deli!

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