Mikey Jukebox (a.k.a. Mikey James, a.k.a. Mikey Lapiana) does it all. He writes all the music, plays all the instruments, and takes all the heat for being an uncompromising musician with a singular focus and vision. From playing drums in bars when he was knee-high to a longneck, to touring with RCA recording artists Longwave, Jukebox - cult hero, champion of the DIY - worked with any number of musicians in order to create the sounds he hears in his head before ultimately deciding to go it alone. He's that driven, that convinced, and that fed up with musicians that fall short - the same musicians that might brand him an egomaniac.

"If they do say it," Jukebox says, "it's behind my back. I think it's just survival of the fittest at this point. When you're 33 - and now I'm getting into producing [he is currently working on The Demos' new CD at Ardent Studios in Memphis] - you just want to make what you want to make. Right around 30, after The Mercies, I was like, ‘OK, the pop dream is gone; I'm not going to go through the roof, be the next hot MTV video. Those days are gone.'"

Also gone are the constant personality obstacles that at one time or another plague virtually every band on the planet. "I just wasn't getting the lifers," Jukebox says. "It was a matter of finding guys that wake up every day not having to force themselves to do it." Jukebox on the other hand, is a lifer. There's proof.

"There's a videotape of me in '84 at 7 years old," Jukebox says, "where my dad teaches me to press ‘record' on a boom box. And I'm there just, ‘So where were the spiders/ while the fly tried to break our balls.' A few minutes later it's ‘White light, white heat, white light, white heat.'"

Dad gave the kid his start, too. "My dad had me in bars by 6 years old playing drums," says Jukebox. "I don't remember learning how to play drums, but I just always knew how to play them."

"I was raised on fusion," he says. "But my uncle is only seven years older than me, and he had me into KISS and The Doors and The Clash, and The Ramones at 7. Then he came back from Purchase where he got into The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Jesus Lizard. So I was getting all this chop stuff from my dad and all this hip stuff from my Uncle Dave."

Jukebox says he fell out of love with playing music for a while in his early teens and played baseball instead. "Yeah," he says. "Everyone was doing it. Nobody wanted to have a garage band at 12."

Throughout his brief career at bat, Jukebox continued to listen to music enthusiastically, and credits the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack for reigniting his passion to play. He discovered it after coming home from his shift as a busboy late one night and flicking on the TV.

"I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?''' he says. "And you just rip on disco at that age, but I was like, ‘This is incredible.' I went out and got the record right away. And to this day, I love it."

"And that got me back into KISS," he says. "I mean, I've been obsessed with Ace Frehley since I was a kid. And that got me into glam; my uncle already had me into Bowie." And that's what led to his first band his senior year in high school, Native Kin.

"We were OK," he says. "It was fun because we didn't take it seriously. It was of the grunge era but it was still psychedelic and jammy."

At this point in his career Jukebox discovered he had a knack for putting hooks over instrumentals. He left to form the short-lived Fantastic Bete Band. Striving still for more energy, he recruited friends to create The Blood.

"I taught my best friends how to play instruments," he says. "It was raw, I was kind of screaming. People said it sounded like The Dead Kennedys. It was my pop crap, but it was over punk... so we sucked. I mean, it worked, it was good, but everyone lost sight really quick and I wasn't satisfied being punk. So I went into this phase where I was going to reform pop music - I had lofty goals, I was a prick. A-A-B-A wasn't good enough, I wanted A-B-C-D-E-F-G, but with all pop hooks within it, in one song. And that was because of Tim Buckley."

Sounds like a good idea...

"It didn't work," he says. "I lost my band. Though there are a couple of demos that are interesting."

Jukebox went back to demo-ing alone in 2000-2001 when he got the call to join Longwave, an atmospheric indie-rock band with psychedelic and garage leanings fronted by ex-Rochesterian Steve Schiltz. Jukebox took the plunge and moved to New York City. His aggressive drumming immediately added to what he describes as the band's Anglo sound.

"My first show was opening for The Strokes at the Stone Pony," he says. "And within four months we were signed."

Jukebox's ride with the band lasted three years until 2004. "We had good times and bad times," he says. "There were four personalities. They didn't want to listen to their drummer. I became the prototypical bitching drummer. I felt we were a very cool band for the time, but they thought they were REM or Wilco or something."

This, along with family issues at home, caused Jukebox to split and head back to Rochester. He got The Blood back together, changing the name to Footage and ultimately The Mercies.

The Mercies played tight, angular pop with nods to bands like The Smiths, Ultravox, or even Echo and the Bunnymen. It was both catchy and edgy. However The Mercies had barely just released its first and only album when Jukebox killed the band a mere two months after the album's release. Roughly 1,500 copies had already sold, and the band was getting airplay on stations like KCRW, but Jukebox couldn't get the band off its ass, into the van, and on the road.

"And with that I just thought to myself, ‘Dude, I can just play everything and bypass all this shit,'" he says. "Have it be my singular vision and hire people. In fact, my next show isn't going to have bass and drums; we'll be running my programmed drums."

And that is precisely where he wanted to be "since the Bete band," he says. "Since '98." Jukebox plays it all on his new, self-titled album, but manages to adapt seemingly cooperative personalities to avoid the repetitive sound one-man bands are susceptible too. It's as if he's a different person behind each instrument, but one that gets along with the others. All the Mikey Jukeboxes on this release want the same thing. He also credits Andy Gill (Gang Of Four) assistant Jon Gray, who mixed the album for giving it its sparkle.

"Mikey Jukebox" is full of its creator's quirk and pop. It's thoughtful, but there isn't any shoe-gazing going on here. And though he preaches pop evisceration - undoing, redoing, breaking, fixing - this is a very listener-friendly record, even for those who didn't necessarily follow the path Jukebox walked to get here.

With a realistic understanding of stardom, Jukebox is focusing on his music and his legacy. "It's like, ‘You're going to die a cult artist,'" he says. "Which is cool, as long as if somewhere down the line I give somebody the same feeling that the artists gave to me to create. If that happens, I did my job."

Mikey Jukebox

w/These Electric Lives

Saturday, September 4

Bug Jar, 219 Monroe Ave

8 p.m. | $7-$9 | 454-2966, mikeyjukebox.com