Since my last properly titled post on Rihanna's concert performances Rihanna has gone on to perform three more concerts in Edmonton (27/3/13), Calgary (30/3/13) and Vancouver (1/4/13). As you may have detected from my Twitter feed (@Sovereignaka) the tour promoters are still refusing to provide me (and by the sounds of it others) with the information needed to tell you how these concerts went. As these three most recent concerts have all taken place in the western, developed nation of Canada I have had no shortage of unofficial sources providing me with information.
However as I've said before in political terms the concerts themselves are probably the least important part of the tour merely providing an excuse for all the other things that are going on. Therefore if I fail to review a concert or am not on Twitter screaming for official comment on a rumour than it's safe to assume the concert passed without major incident.
That said Rihanna's Edmonton concert was - by all accounts - very poor. It appears that the only thing that Rihanna did right was to arrive on stage at her unofficial start-time of 22:00. She then seemed distracted and disinterested as she boredly worked her way through the motions of her standard set (Act 2&3 - Jump & Man Down were flipped) and standard costume changes with her backing track and backing singers doing most of the work. The kindest review I can find online compared Rihanna's performance to "This Is Spinal Tap" a spoof documentary about rockstar excess and conceit gone too far.
I think though that Rihanna's fans should be able to forgive her the poor performance in Edmonton because she was hardly allowed the best preparation for the concert. On Monday (25/3/13) there was of course the drama of Rihanna's tour caravan being impounded at the US/Canada border threatening the cancellation of the Winnipeg concert. On Tuesday (26/3/13) Rihanna had the stress of travelling from Winnipeg to Edmonton while her case against Berdon LLP was being heard in Barbados and that bikini picture was released. On the journey Rihanna also made the mistake of trying to get cheeky with me on Twitter which once again rapidly led to her being put back in her place. On Wednesday (27/3/13) events forced me to further rub in that point by explaining the connection between the Dionne Warwick bankruptcy and Rihanna's Berdon LLP while pointing out that Britain's official reaction to that bikini picture was hardly complimentary. Having being forced to put up with this stream of very public and highly personal insults it was hardly a surprise that Rihanna was at the top of her game that evening.
Rihanna's preparation for the Calgary concert should have been equally miserable. After driving through the day and night Rihanna arrived in Calgary on Friday (29/3/13) a full day and a half before her next concert. The idea here was to cause her stress by suddenly lifting the pressure of the concert, travel, concert structure and instead leaving her with time to kill in a strange city in a foreign country. Fortunately I'd already published my Morocco preview so she at least had something to read. While Rihanna was twiddling her thumbs we were all supposed to be speculating about whether or not Chris Brown would travel up to visit Rihanna and how this would affect Rihanna's relationship with Melissa Forde.
To make matters worse the UK channel 4Music which is a division of the government funded Channel4 and like BBC Radio1 has a habit of trading on my reputation decided to give Rihanna some award or other. Due to the time difference the award - which was announced late in the evening UK time - was designed to force Rihanna onto Twitter to give a sort of acceptance speech. The intention was to disrupt Rihanna's sleep pattern and trigger a Twitter discussion with me at a time when I'm not traditionally at my most coherent. Therefore Rihanna's hashtag laden response was a swipe at 4Music not Beyonce. Of course as it turned out by that point Rihanna and I were already in the middle of a Twitter exchange that I quite enjoyed. Mainly because I'd been making extensive use of my herbal grinder shaped like a Canadian dollar coin known as a 'Loonie.'
Later in the day Rihanna went shopping in a Calgary branch of Footlooker which is an international sports/fashion retail chain. I think primarily this was just something to do. However I suppose it could be interpreted as Rihanna reminding me that if I needed to by new trainers I could always go to the Croydon branch of Footlooker. That interpretation though sort of suggests that Rihanna doesn't quite understand that although Footlocker is an international chain different stores stock different products. That isn't a good look for someone whose got their own retail fashion line. So it seems some of the other customers decided to have a little bit of fun at Rihanna's expense by placing a baby's stroller/pram by the tills as she was paying for whatever it was she'd purchased. This produced a photograph that played on all those Rihanna pregnancy rumours and gave us a possible glance of a Rihanna future. Or perhaps it was just a suggestion of what Rihanna might like to use to transport Chris Brown around should they continue their relationship.
Later in the evening Rihanna posted and then quickly deleted some downright explicit photographs of female strippers she was watching while partying in a Calgary strip club. I think this was a drunk Rihanna referencing my habit of looking at and occasionally sharing pornography on a Friday night. Although my memory of most Friday nights is somewhat hazy on that particular night I may have watched something quite similar to what Rihanna posted. That suggests that Rihanna gets more access to my viewing than I choose to share. Obviously the fact that Rihanna and presumably Melissa Forde were watching female strippers may have raised all those old questions about their sexuality and the exact nature of their relationship. However as Rihanna is a stage performer who uses sexuality as part of her act it's clear she has something of a professional affinity with strippers - some of whom are much more talented then you would assume. Also I think it's fair to say that a strip club is one of the few places on earth Rihanna isn't going to be the centre of attention.
Whatever you think about how Rihanna spent her Friday night it clearly worked because her Saturday (30/3/13) concert Calgary was much, much stronger than her Edmonton concert. The main complaint was that Rihanna took to the stage some 100 minutes late at around 22:40. This is a full 40 minutes later than Rihanna's usual level of lateness. This along with the explicit nature of support act A$AP Rocky's set prompted a lot of complaints from parents who'd either allowed or taken their children to the concert. Many of these were forced to leave before Rihanna had even taken to the stage and are now seeking refunds. If they don't get them it's unlikely they'll be back. There seems to have been an element of not wanting to be seen to rise in Calgary before Easter Sunday about Rihanna's lateness. However the Qataris have already blamed it on Rihanna's alcohol and marijuana use in the hope that many Muslims simply wouldn't get the Easter Calvary/Calgary reference. There seems to be a hint of truth in Qatar's assessment though because Rihanna seemed subdued, distracted and lethargic during the Intro and Act 1 sections. However she had perked up dramatically during the second act (Acts 2&3 were again flipped in what seems to be becoming the standard) and performed a storming concert that was well received by all who stayed until the end. Due to the physical nature of Rihanna's stage performance along with the fact her voice has not yet fully recovered the backing singers and backing track had to do most of the work. However it is clear that things are improving so it looks like the people at the European leg are going to be getting the best of it.
Following the Calgary concert Rihanna attended the sort of compulsory, work related after-party at Calgary's Ten X club before driving off to Vancouver. Before arriving in Vancouver Rihanna stopped off for supplies at a local branch of Wal-mart. Prompting the circulation of lots of pictures and speculation about exactly what supplies Rihanna was buying this will henceforth be known as 'The Wal-mart incident' as it led to collisions with plate glass windows in California US and in Australia. I wrote about this more fully at the time in a post that can be read here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/on-climate-change-front.html Basically though it re-ignited the argument about the level of official information being provided about the tour. After all how difficult would it be for Live Nation to simply post each set-list on http://www.Setlist.fm
This argument about the flow of official information is a long running and complicated one. On one hand Rihanna's CIA handlers don't want any official information provided at all because they want to try and force people to find out their own information while causing confusion through rumour and speculation. Rihanna obviously wants to go along with the handlers because they're threatening her with things like the loss of her US work permit, the loss of her Berdon LLP case and the possible prosecution of her and her mother for tax evasion. However there are other people in Rihanna's close social circle - Melissa Forde springs to mind- who understand that by not providing this information Rihanna is making herself an enemy of some very violent people with long memories whilst making it incredibly difficult for people like me to do their jobs. Therefore this is clearly an issue that is creating some tension within Rihanna's core social group.
So I should point out that while things like Tweets always help and as the trip from Saint Paul's to Winnipeg demonstrates international border crossings are something I need to know about almost as they happen the flow of information is not primarily the responsibility of either Rihanna or members of her core social group. That's because things like liaising with local media and producing and distributing a video montage of each concert is something that can only be done by the promoter Live Nation. I don't know the exact nature of Rihanna's relationship with Live Nation but I doubt she's in a position to start giving orders although it might be worth having the discussion.
Although it seems innocuous Rihanna's trip to Wal-mart was considered important because it touches on an intensely private matter that sadly is going to be a recurring issue throughout Rihanna's tour - especially the US legs. Ever since that rumour went out just before the second US Presidential debate about Chris Brown getting Rihanna pregnant there has been a lot of international interest in Rihanna's menstrual cycle. After all that is usually one of the key indicators of whether a woman is pregnant or not. Therefore there was a lot of speculation about whether Rihanna had stopped off to buy tampons or sanitary towels. There was also speculation that Rihanna may have stopped off to buy condoms because through the Tulsa HIV dentist story her CIA handlers have been speculating that Rihanna is infected with some sexually transmitted disease such as HIV or Hepatitis. As Rihanna hasn't had any form of physical contact with Chris Brown in at least the last month I'll agree this might sound odd. However there have been some pretty wild rumours doing the rounds about what has been going on aboard Rihanna's tour bus. The most widely circulated of these is that Rihanna is now having regular sex with her support act A$AP Rocky. Also if you're foolish enough to listen to British sources you would know that rather than travelling from Edmonton to Calgary Rihanna instead spent Thursday (28/3/13) getting gang-banged by at least two unidentified men although in some versions of the story they were apparently queueing around the block. However I suspect this is the first Rihanna has heard about that. The US and France have already received Brazil's response to this because frankly after Haiti they should at least contribute something to the Olympic preparation effort.
Obviously you would expect all this pressure and public speculation about her sexual and reproductive health would have been enough to put Rihanna off her Vancouver show. However just to make sure the Canadians decided to take the opportunity to break that news that two Canadian Jihadists took part in the In Amenas hostage taking in Morocco's neighbour Algeria. This obviously allows Canada to open a bridge of dialogue with Algeria ahead of Rihanna's Morocco concert and highlights Canada's recent role as a major exporter of Islamic terrorism as it relates to Canada's close alliance with the UK as part of the Commonwealth Realm. The Canadians also tried to provoke a discussion about Rihanna's role in riot- particularly as part of the Arab Spring - with a story of Vancouver police officers caught on tape assaulting an Arab man who'd jumped a red traffic light on a bicycle.
None of this mattered though because it seems Rihanna's Vancouver show was one of her best yet. She actually arrived on stage 5 mins early at around 21:55. She then worked her way through her standard set list and costume changes (Acts 2&3 were I think again flipped) seeming happy, enthusiastic and full of energy.
Rihanna will now travel on through the US/Canada border for her next concert in Seattle (3/4/13). Meanwhile 'Hell Week' is picking up pace ahead of Chris Brown's Friday (5/4/13) Court appearance. So far Lindsey Lohan has falsely claimed to be pregnant and the Micheal Jackson wrongful death suit is just about to get underway in Los Angles. The first issue before the Court is how much access to information about the trial the public are going to be allowed.
17:55 on 2/4/13.
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