Operation Misery: Month 2, Week 3, Day 6.

I have explained at great length how the Bangladesh factory collapse was intended to ruin Rihanna's Baltimore concert on Wednesday (24/4/13) in my post that can be read here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/operation-misery-month-2-week-3-day-4.html

Sadly all this did seem to have a negative impact on Rihanna's performance. She took to the stage at the standard time of around 22:00 (local) and worked her way through the standard set-list (Acts 2&3 were switched) and costume changes. However Rihanna seemed depressed, lethargic and not at all strong vocally. She was though much stronger than she was at her Florida concerts last weekend and considering I myself nearly collapsed with exhaustion on Wednesday it's hard to blame Rihanna for a less then stellar performance. It is though further evidence that the US leg of the tour needs to end in Brooklyn as scheduled.

The main effort to ruin Rihanna's performance last night in Atlantic City was of course River Island and Rihanna's CIA handlers getting together to falsely claim that Rihanna will be working on another clothing line for the UK based high-street retailer. Having being caught in the lie the UK immediately panicked with the story about celebrity publicist Max Clifford being charged with 11 counts of indecent assault. This in turn sent the US in a panic leading to things like the 'discovery' of part of the under-carriage from one of the 9/11 planes in New York City and a search of a Boston land-fill site for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's computer as they tried to work out what the UK meant by the Max Clifford story. On top of that Rihanna had to contend with me causing my usual level of chaos on Twitter. That was because during the hunt for Tsarnaev Massachusetts law enforcement would have uncovered evidence of lots of minor crimes such as drug offences. This presents a problem of what they now do with that information. In the spirit of co-operation that led to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's arrest I think they should overlook them with the obvious exceptions of child pornography, rape and murder.

As for how all this affected Rihanna's performance it's hard to tell. There are no local reviews available and there is all of ten minutes of footage available and that's all from the final (Outro) section of the show. Despite intentionally misleading rumours I suspect Rihanna performed the standard set-list and costume changes. The big difference though was that a much more basic, stripped back stage-set was used. This was merely due to the amount of space available at the venue and I think actually gave a more intimate feel to the performance. I also hope that this reduced stage-set is the one that's going to be used for the Morocco, Turkey and South Africa concerts. That's because the less there is the less there is to offend and it will be a lot cheaper to transport. From the tiny fraction of the performance I've seen Rihanna seemed much more energetic, happier and stronger vocally then she was in Baltimore.

After the concert Rihanna posted an old picture of her in a leopard-print leotard and Tiger mask on Instagram/Twitter titled "Hello Kitty." This immediately made me - and quite a few other people - think of Katy Perry so seemed to be an attempt to mock the rumours about Rihanna and Katy Perry attending a Florida strip-club together. As for the wine bottle pictures I'm arrogant enough to assume Rihanna suggesting that we should so get drunk together. After all she clearly needs a man of my talents. Sadly though due to the G8 Summit if that's to happen during the UK leg of the tour it's going to take prior arrangement with Rihanna's side making the first approach.

Finally I should point out that there is rumour doing the rounds that Rihanna will be taking the Diamonds World Tour to Manila in the Philippines in September. As the River Island thing demonstrates it's actually very common in the industry for a concert promoter to announce an artist is going to perform at a venue in an effort to force the artist into agreeing. Therefore I'll need a lot more convincing before I treat that as fact. I most certainly hope it's not true though because as with the South Africa concerts a trip to the Philippines (who are big in the garment manufacturing industry) will political rather than profitable.

(Originally Posted) 20:45 on 27/4/13.