LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

'The Enemy That Lives Within' - stories of people living with the HIV/AIDS virus. Disc two of the six-CD BBC Radio 2 series 'The Radio Ballads.' The 2006 Radio Ballads are self-narrating music documentaries about issues of our time, featuring interviews with rarely-heard communities and songs inspired directly by their stories. The series examined the emotions of communities involved in steel production, shipbuilding, Northern Ireland's Troubles, hunting with hounds, fairgrounds and people living with the HIV/AIDS virus, and was first broadcast on BBC Radio 2 between February and April 2006.The Enemy That Lives Within weaves stories of intense personal experience around beautifully measured songs about how six individuals have coped with living with the HIV virus. From diagnosis to death, The Enemy That Lives Within explores the complex human emotions that involvement with the virus generates. This programme is a modern parallel of the 1962 MacColl/Parker/Seeger Radio Ballad The Body Blow which explored the human impact of polio.

A stunning and beautifully produced 60 minute musical and speech memoir with six highly personal and frank testimonies exploring the individual impact of HIV
Ten superb original songs inspired by personal testimony, performed by artists including Karine Polwart, Jez Lowe, Julie Matthews and John Tams
Liner notes explaining the writing process and historical context
Second in a series of six Ballads, as broadcast on BBC Radio 2. The series took its inspiration from the Radio Ballads made by folk singer Ewan MacColl and BBC producer Charles Parker for the BBC Home Service in the 1950s and 1960s. The original Ballads are widely considered masterpieces of radio, weaving direct personal experience with songs written from and about the tales told.