The Labels Aren’t Gonna Forget the Monster Now : Blues-based Big Head Todd and the Monsters can laugh at past rejections. A hit debut album can do that.

“The letter said forget it, Big Head Tom--we don’t want you,” chuckles Todd Park Mohr, recalling a rejection letter years ago from MCA Records that couldn’t even get the band’s name right.

It’s Big Head Todd and the Monsters, featuring lead singer-guitarist Mohr, bassist Rob Squires and drummer Brian Nevin.

They can laugh at all those rejections now that the band has a hit debut album, “Sister Sweetly,” on Giant Records with 450,000 copies already sold and another 5,000 being bought each week. That’s quite a feat for a band playing music that hardly any company thought was commercial.

“The record companies didn’t hate the music--they just didn’t think they could market it,” Mohr said.

Mohr’s tag for the band’s music: alternative blues-based rock ‘n’ roll. “That kind of music is really big on the charts,” he cracks.

This Colorado-based trio is often lumped with groups like the Grateful Dead and Blues Traveler that are known for lengthy jams that unpredictably weave through the musical spectrum, blending all sorts of elements. The Monsters are also big on roots rock, playing Hendrix and Sly Stone tunes.

“It’s alternative because we explore music with the sensibilities of the current rock groups,” Mohr says. “It’s not structured like mainstream music even though the roots are in mainstream.”

What really sets the Monsters apart from other alternative groups is their passion for the blues, which is an integral part of their sound. Mohr, who’s part Caucasian and part Korean, has been a blues fanatic, idolizing the likes of Albert Collins, since junior high school.

“I was a weird kid,” says Mohr. “I rebelled by listening to the blues. I always felt at home with the blues. It’s really the music of my heart.”

Starting out as a sax player, he switched to guitar after high school. In college he, Nevin and Squires, who first worked together in a high school band, started playing together again in 1986. Mohr, majoring in English literature and Oriental history and planning a career as an academic, transferred from Colorado State to the University of Colorado to be with his buddies.

“We went our separate ways after high school but ended up living together and going to school together,” Mohr recalls. “We were playing parties and then bars in the Boulder area. We liked playing together so much that we dropped out of school and started playing full time.”

They built a large following in the club scene and even put out two independent albums--”Another Mayberry” in 1989 and “Midnight Radio” in 1990--that sold a respectable total of 75,000 copies.

But to the band, those albums were just steppingstones to something bigger.

“We wanted a real record contract and we tried for years and couldn’t get one,” Mohr recalls.

What finally made a difference was hiring a manager who was able to coax Giant Records owner Irving Azoff to see them play in an Aspen club. Two years ago, they signed with Giant Records.

“Sister Sweetly” came out about a year ago and has sold slowly and steadily, helped along by the trio’s extensive touring--both as a headliner and opening for artists like Robert Plant. (The group will appear at the Palace next Saturday, the Coach House on March 14 and the Ventura Theatre on March 15.) There is, however, a big discrepancy between the band’s live and studio sounds--which still bothers Mohr.

“On the album there are a lot of ballads and we’re fairly restrained and mellow,” explains Mohr, who writes all the band’s music. “I don’t like that. It’s not really us. When we did the album we needed something that was radio-friendly. David Z was the only producer available at the time who had any radio success. We went along with what he wanted. That’s why we made a slicker radio record. None of us wanted to make an album that the critics loved but it sold only 12 copies.”

What about the next album?

“We paid our dues in terms of making compromises to get on the radio,” Mohr says. “We’re going to be more involved with the production of this record. It will be a harder rock ‘n’ roll record. We have a strong band sound. You don’t realize it that much on the current record and but it will be very obvious on the next one.”