WE DON’T KNOW, but we’ve been told! Jimi’s axe is made of gold!

The People wail and what you’ll find

is The People on stage will blow your mind!

Testing!

One, two!

Testing!

Three, four!

When Niki had said “boot camp”, I figured he just meant that we’d be practicing hard. But here we were marching up and down the garage, singing like a bunch of Marines in training.

(Okay, I was exaggerating about Niki being in uniform, but he might as well have been.)

“COMPANY AT EASE!” he screamed, and we all relaxed.

“Do we have to do this?” Miller wheezed. “Can’t we just practice?”

“The first lesson of being a true rocker is discipline, soldier!” Niki shouted into Miller’s face. “We march together and we play together! IS THAT CLEAR?”

Miller blinked. “Uh …”

“I SAID, IS! THAT! CLEAR!” The veins on Niki’s forehead throbbed. He looked like an angry tomato.

“Y-yes!” Miller stuttered.

“YES, WHAT?” Niki screamed.

“YES, SIR!”

“That’s better, soldier.” Niki strutted toward the microphone stand (which we’d slapped together from a broom and a bucket of sand). While his back was turned, I looked over at Kasey, who shrugged and mouthed go with it.

Niki had brought a blackboard. He picked up a piece of chalk and wrote “THE WAY OF THE ’TUDE” on it.

“’Tude,” he said, tapping the board. “That’s short for ATTITUDE, people. Quite simply, it’s the key to rock-and-roll success. You don’t got ’tude, you don’t got what it takes. Hit the lights, Rafeman.”⁷

I switched off the garage lights and Niki flicked a remote. The data projector whirred to life. A black-and-white photo of a guy smashing up a guitar on stage popped up on the screen.

“Joe Strummer. The Clash. London, 1977.” Niki turned to us. “’Tude.” He clicked the remote and another photo appeared. This one showed a guy wearing clown makeup and sticking out his tongue, which seemed to be about eight feet long.

“Gene Simmons. KISS. Chicago, 1986. ’Tude.”

Another click, another pic. This time it was a woman with MASSIVE hair. She was screaming into the lens while wearing a red leather suit and boots and holding a leopard on a leash.

“Tina Turner. New York, 1984.” Niki looked at us meaningfully. “Textbook ’tude. You getting this yet?”

The images came thick and fast, each one accompanied by Niki saying the word “’tude”. I couldn’t help but notice all the rockers Niki told us had ’tude came from the 1980s or before.

Just like Niki.

I glanced over at Kasey. For something that was supposed to be turning The People into a competition-winning band, the rock-and-roll boot camp didn’t include much actual, y’know, music. Up to this point, we hadn’t played a single note.

“Stick with it,” Kasey whispered.

I nodded. This ’tude training was all well and good, but the idea I’d had back at Gudonya was itching away inside my head. I wanted to run it past Kasey to see if she thought it was as totally, massively awesome as I did, but so far, Niki wasn’t giving us a spare second.

The plan would have to wait.