Too bad Rodney Dangerfield won't be on the Strip again until Oct. 14. He's the one person who could outdo Collective Soul when it comes to "no respect" stories.

The Georgia rock band, due at the House of Blues on Tuesday, has sold more than 7 million records. But you wouldn't know it based on their overall perception in the record industry.

"The mass media won't give us the time of day," says Ed Roland, the band's frontman and chief songwriter. "We've stuck around so long, it's almost by default people go, `OK, I guess we need to talk to these guys.' "

The quintet played the first Woodstock reunion five years ago, just after the hit "Shine" thrust it into the limelight. This year, Collective Soul was back at the third Woodstock -- on a side stage. No respect. "I really had a hard time getting behind that," Roland confesses.

And then there's the notion -- advanced in at least one major publication -- that Collective Soul is basically a studio confection, masterminded by Roland as a sort of latter-day Alan Parsons Project, who assembles anonymous musicians for occasional live dates.

But that would ignore the fact that the band has been on the road for the past eight months. Or that Roland and drummer Shane Evans started Collective Soul 10 years ago come Halloween. Or that Roland's known his brother Dean -- the group's rhythm guitarist -- as long as someone can know his brother.

"It's very frustrating," Roland says, but adds, "I'll keep fighting until the day I quit. Some bands are put in that position. We don't want to be in that position, but we're very proud of what we do. We're only in control in that we do the best we can for people, and hopefully they like it. ... If you can get a certain amount of people to like it, you can hang in there."

In that respect, Collective Soul has done better than many a rock band whose grabbed a magazine cover from them. It's one of only a handful in the '90s to put out four albums (on a major label; none self-financed). And each album has managed to get a song or two on the radio: Past hits such as "World I Know" and "Precious Declaration" were joined this year by a pair of new ones, "Heavy" and "Run."

"The good thing (about the hits) is, I think we get noticed quicker than most new bands by radio, but at the same time we still have to push ourselves," Roland says. Given the disposable, fast-food mentality of the music business, "if you don't write a good song, you'll be out just as quick. It doesn't matter if you've been around for 20 years or been around for a month.

"We still have to prove ourselves. We still haven't reached that luxury where Collective Soul puts a record out and everybody runs to the stores." On the other hand, Collective Soul's polished, timeless sound is less prone to the whims of the music business. The band is the rare 1994 arrival that didn't jump on the grunge bandwagon. Its songs felt quite at home on album-rock radio formats (such as KOMP-FM 92.3 locally) that stuck more to the Aerosmith/Van Halen standards, as well as some of the alternative and adult-rock formats that attacked from left and right as '90s radio split into niche formatting.

"Once you put a title on yourself, you pigeonhole yourself," Roland notes. "If there is a title such as alternative, it's not going to be around in five years.

"Rock 'n' roll allows you to do anything you want. The rule in rock 'n' roll is there are no rules. ...It's a full spectrum of emotion and sound. Once you start saying, `This is who we are,' you're limiting yourself."

Collective Soul's mannered rock is not the type that gets hipster music critics any more excited than its regular-guys' look and lifestyle. Sorry, no lipstick or Bible-burning to bring out the rebellious streak in teens or outrage Wal-Mart.

On the other hand, "the good thing about not getting much press is we've never been caught up in a trend. It's never been about who we're dating or not dating or about wearing makeup," Roland says. "It's always been about the music."

That's the way its been for Roland since he heard his first Elton John song as a 13-year-old. "I knew what I wanted to do," he says, when a few years later he went to work as an apprentice at Reel to Reel recording studios.

"I recorded everything from bluegrass to heavy metal," he says. "It was just whoever came in. Blue-collar bands, if that makes sense. It wasn't a state-of-the-art studio. Basically, it taught me how to handle weird circumstances and people who were not used to being around a studio. ... I wouldn't trade it for the world."

In the meantime, he was making guitar-and-piano demo tapes of songs he had been writing. One of them, "Shine," proved to be the breakthrough that landed the group -- which also includes lead guitarist Ross Childress and bassist Will Turpin -- a deal for its first album, "Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid."

On the new album, Roland as producer tips his hat to his influences, particularly the Beatles and Electric Light Orchestra leader Jeff Lynne. "Run" -- the single tied to the movie soundtrack "Varsity Blues" -- particularly laid on the strings and instrumental textures.

"The Beatles weren't so much a band as `Rock 'n' Roll 101,' " he says. But the album was less an homage than a reflection of "having all the time we needed." "Usually, when we went into the studio we had six weeks to finish the record, because we had a tour plan and the record company wanted the record out," he says. "This time, they didn't care how long we took, and we had a much bigger budget. The luxury of time and money really gave us time to play with knobs like we'd always wanted to."

But the next time might be another story. As Roland notes for the second time, rock 'n' roll has no rules. "For the next record, we talked about doing just 10 songs that rock," he says. "That's where we're talking about; that doesn't mean we'll go there, but that's definitely where we're heading. No ballads, no midtempos, just 10 rock songs."