THE CHEVELLES - Rollerball Candy

THE CHEVELLES   Rollerball  Candy  CD  1995
She's Not Around / Mesmerized / Rollerball Candy / Something / Playground / 867 5309 / No Need To Say / Time Machine / Us / Phenobarbital Love / For Your Love / Fall / Starlet / Gold Trans-Am / Delirium.
Produced by The Chevelles.

The Chevelles: Duane Smith: guitars & vocals / Julian Buckland: drums & vocals / Adrian Allen: guitars & vocals / Jeff Halley: bass.

The Chevelles are a power pop band from Perth, Western Australia. They formed in 1989 and have toured Australia, Europe, the United States and South America.The band took its name from the Chevrolet Chevelle. They played their first headline show at the Coronado Hotel on 15 December 1989. They soon came to the attention of independent labels across the country, including the Sydney-based Zero Hour Records (named after the Plimsouls' tune) operated by former Stems roadie George Matzkov.

''Rollerball Candy'' was released by Running Circle in early 1995. The album was more varied than "Gigantic", displaying a punk sound in "Delirium" and including a melodic ballad called "Fall". Its 15 tracks made it a long album for a pop group but in essence it was tailor-made for Spanish rock and roll fans.
Initial sales of the record in Spain and Portugal were encouraging. Response from Spanish press and radio was excellent. The record received strong reviews in established Spanish rock zines like Ruta 66, Beaten Generation and La Musica, in which the band were compared to DM3 and The Dubrovniks.
Sales and promotion of "Rollerball Candy" were slower in Australia. With no distribution deal the band relied on sales at shows and through a small number of Perth and eastern states record stores. It became apparent that fans in Sydney and Melbourne were unaware that a new album been released. At the same time Running Circle's European distribution campaign was floundering. There was no evidence that the disc had was being distributed or promoted outside of Spain.
Around this time Smith put together a band called Rollercoaster to play some songs he thought unsuitable for the Chevelles. Teaming up with Grant Ferstat (ex-Month of Sundays), Dave Shaw of The Stems and Boom Babies) and friend Craig Maclean, he recorded an 11-track rock album. At the time Smith thought it might be well received in the ever-hungry Spanish rock scene. The album eventually was released in mid-1999 on Spanish power pop label Snap Records.

In mid-1996 news was received from Spain that Running Circle was bankrupt. This annulled the Chevelles' contract with the label. Rollerball Candy had been released almost 18 months earlier and had not succeeded, through poor distribution and promotion. The band resolved to take the record back to the market. Smith contacted Paradoxx Music, a Brazilian dance music label that had distributed Gigantic from Survival and had sold several thousand copies of the record, and went to Brazil to negotiate a Rollerball Candy release. An agreement was formed but the deal fell apart when Paradoxx restructured and restaffed.
Notwithstanding Running Circle's demise the band continued to have a strong following in Spain. Smith and Allen played three acoustic shows in Madrid in January 1997.
Later that year, after six months of sporadic playing in Perth, and with continuing frustration with overseas record labels, the band sought a new deal in Australia. David Hughes-Owen, the manager of Perth power pop label Spinning Top, had known members of the band for several years. Smith had actually offered Rollerball Candy to Hughes-Owen for Australian release in January 1995, but at the time the label felt it didn't have the money or network to support the album. Spinning Top put together an Australian power pop compilation called Pop on Top for U.S. label Bomp! Records, using the Chevelles' "She's Not Around" as the lead track. The compilation was released in 1996 and was well received in the U.S., where Spinning Top discovered the Chevelles had a small but strong fanbase.
In 1997 the Chevelles and Spinning Top formed an agreement to see if the label could market Rollerball Candy. Spinning Top had a long association with U.S. label Not Lame, whose manager Bruce Brodeen was a fan of Australia pop and regularly stocked records from Australia in his mail order catalogue. Brodeen was a fan of the Chevelles and accepted Spinning Top's offer of an opportunity to release some Chevelles material. The band had obtained the rights to its back catalogue so Not Lame had the choice of all tracks recorded by the band back since 1992. Brodeen put together a 'Best Of'-style compilation titled "At Second Glance", concentrating on the band's melodic pop sound rather than its rock aspect. Source: Wikipedia

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