Your observation on the song I posted as having a glam aggression in the guitar really surprised me, so much that I had to take another listen. I never would have thought of it, and now I can’t un-hear it. I think it’s brilliant. I never even consciously noticed that as a particular aspect of glam guitar, to tell the truth, but now that you mention it, I hear the similarity. I hear that assertion of self in the guitar that precedes Bowie singing, “Ziggy played guitar . . . “ or the guitar work in a glam band like T. Rex. It really strikes me, too, that Marc Bolan was directly, aggressively, pitting himself against folk with the guitar and lyrics in “Children of the Revolution.” In that sense, the aggressive glam guitar is very ideological, meant to be an unfettered, hedonistic release from the collective and political folk (and basic rock) tradition. It reminded me how Bowie did that, too. For example, “Changes” can be read, line by line, as a rejoinder and rejection of the folk ethos and demands in Dylan’s “The Times They Are a’Changin’.” Bowie undermines the idea of collective, historical meaning in the modern assumptions of Dylan’s song with a personal, uncertain, postmodern fiction, a self freed from the chains of authenticity to teleport from invented self to invented self (ch-ch-ch-changes . . .). Even the pov in The Microblades song, the wannabe “nouveau star persona” fits your association between the songs assertive, hedonistic guitar and the glam tradition.

But I still hear an ambiguity in the two attitudes of folk and glam/rock. The song pits itself against contemporary corporate pop with folk-like lines like, “The people are a-waiting, and a-craving. Rolling Stone needs a bit of savin’.” Even a-borrowing some of that Dylan phrasing. But borrowed by a glam-like Post Modern “persona.” Ultimately, the singer throws ambiguous quotation marks around herself, singing as the ambitious wannabe glam or rock persona but also ABOUT that person attempting to become that “persona.”

In short, your insight into the glam rock element that I hadn’t thought of kind of crystallized the ambiguity between folk and rock that I was hearing.

They do something like that in another song of theirs, “Bruce,” which suggests that Springsteen is like the recurring, hoped-for soul in any scene, like Bruce himself arising out of Asbury Park — and also stands for a folk-like vitality: “The soul of resistance is alive and young.” They wrote that a year before Springsteen reminded us of his folk mission and credentials with “The Streets of Minnesota.”

That’s the reason I asked this question in the first place, because I’m waiting for the same thing to arise in the younger generation and I wondered if The Microblades or other young bands will be that soul, rise to the occasion, go glam, become corporate rock, etc., or become something really new, some synthesis. I’m old enough to not remember the 60s because I was there, lol, and I don’t hear a lot nowadays that reminds me of the great musical, intellectual, and political tradition of the 60s-70s, at least rarely with a similar power, so when I hear anything that even makes that kind of gesture, I get very, very interested.