While hunting for different editions of the Barbarella comic, I came across a rarity from Virgin Record Stores in the UK from 1981. Around that time, the second collection of Barbarella comics, Le Coleres du Manges-Minutes, was released in various editions internationally and Virgin Records printed a four-issue series in English under the title The New Adventures of Barbarella (this title was also used in the German Heyne editions a decade earlier with Die Neuen Abenteuer der Barbarella). Those Virgin Records publications had become my white whale in both their rarity and cost. Rarity being the biggest barrier because for a while I could only find visual records of their existence and none for sale. Eventually, I pieced together numbers 2, 3, and 4 for a decent and not embarrassing price. The cost of my collection as a whole is embarrassing, but only for a few editions am I actually uncomfortable confessing how much I paid.
But still the Virgin Records issue number 1 was elusive.
This is often the case with Barbarella publications: they are only available from European sellers and so in addition to the price, though sometimes reasonable, the shipping is absolute bloody robbery. I’m currently completing my collection of the Linus magazine serialization of Coleres and the L’Echo des Savanes serialization of Le Semble-Lune and shipping is by far my greatest grievance.
With the first issue of the Virgin Records release there was a different barrier.
A German site called Comic.eck24.de had a copy of all four, but would only ship to DACH countries (something something, Aryan racism, something something). So–me knowing no one or at least me not keeping in touch with anyone I knew–I asked my bro-in-law if he knew anyone in Germany. You see where this is going. He had an acquaintance by whom he floated the idea and she immediately accepted. I couldn’t express how grateful I was. My promise to her, though since broken and replaced with a very expensive red wine from a local/international shop, was to write a song about her called The Ballad of the Barbarella Mule.
After the almost two years it took me to write Figures in a Landscape, I was exhausted with composing and with my current reckless atonal style, and I needed a break to figure shit out. The Barbarella website was on the to list of do’s so creating it was a great pivot in quality of focus. However, once it was in a stable place, I was ready to get back to composing. The current title and story came to me without doubt: The Ballad of Barbarella the Smuggler.
I chose the instrumentation, flute/clarinet/cello, from the initial notes I had for a previous story, yet I’m completely uncomfortable with that instrumentation. I don’t understand woodwinds. The structure, like Figures, is a suite of scenes. The premise is that Barbarella is hired to smuggle a package from one planet to another and though she’s not allowed to look at the contents of the package, those in the places she travels can and they all see something different. The first and the last verses are fixed but I’m undecided if there’s an order of those in between.
The Ballad of Barbarella the Smuggler (in which our heroine transport a package to various lands where the inhabitants of each perceive it differently)
- Verse 1: Where she receives the package along with her instructions
- Verse 2: Where the locals consider her a goddess because the moon bears her likeness
- Verse 3: Where she is befriended by ‘Times the Martian and tours the world before departing
- Verse 4: Where the world is empty save for a single, brave scientist
- Verse 5: Where the people show her their most cherished possession: a map that can tell the future
- Verse 6: Where a group protects her from unseen forces
- Verse 7: Where she tours an exact replica of a tower no one is permitted to visit
- Verse 8: Where she is shown the last seed of an exotic, flowering plant once thought extinct
- Verse 9: Where she arrives and delivers the package to a loving crowd