2MCE FM COME ALL YE – 12 February 2023
Bruce Cameron February 12, 2023
The programs in January and February feature the eight Radio Ballads produced for the BBC in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker. Each Radio Ballad of approximately 60 minutes makes up most of the second half of each program.
The sixth Radio Ballad, On the Edge, deals with young people on the cusp of childhood and adulthood. Contrary to expectations that young people would refuse to talk freely about their hopes and fears to adults, they held nothing back. MacColl noted that “the problem was not to get them talking, but to stop them.” In the summer of 1962, conversing in coffee bars and dance halls, youth clubs and college rooms plastered with pin-ups, teenagers expressed their hopes and fears, dreams and observations with a stark honesty that reveals much about growing up in the 1960s.
