It was a scene that very few people would have expected to see in the Bay Area this week:
An arena full of thousands of fans, all cheering on five men in Boston Celtics jerseys.
Yes, even the ones wearing Golden State Warriors gear were busy showering these guys in green with love.
Had Dubs fans gotten fickle right as their team was ready to take on the Celtics in the NBA Finals?
Nope, these particular fans weren’t thinking about hoops. They were thinking about hits — and the Boston-proud New Kids on the Block were delivering plenty of them on Wednesday night, June 1, at the SAP Center in San Jose. The group also performs June 2 at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, ticketmaster.com.
“We would be remiss if we didn’t mention a couple of basketball games coming up,” said New Kid Donnie Wahlberg, reminding the crowd that the band traditionally wears Celtics jerseys during a part in their shows.
Yet, these fans weren’t about to let the group’s questionable taste in sports teams and jerseys get in the way of enjoying what amounted to a wonderfully nostalgic soundtrack of hits from the ’80s and ’90s.
And it wasn’t just this multimillion-selling boy band supplying the hits. New Kids were joined by three special guests — legendary hip-hop troupe Salt-N-Pepa, East Bay R&B hitmakers En Vogue and pop crooner extraordinaire Rick Astley — as part of the thoroughly entertaining Mixtape Tour.
Like the previous Mixtape trek in 2019 — which also featured Salt-N-Pepa as well as Naughty By Nature, Tiffany and the great Debbie Gibson — this tour isn’t organized in the traditional sense of opening acts setting the stage for the big headliner.
Instead, it’s just one big nearly-three-hour-long set where everybody takes turns performing — kind of like an old-school variety show.
The format is a win-win for everyone involved. Fans don’t have to endure the lengthy set breaks that usually come with multiple acts. And the opening acts get to play before full arenas, as opposed to large patches of empty seats while the NKOTB fans finish up their Chipotle burritos in the parking lot.
The New Kids were actually the first act to the take the stage, appearing right after 8 p.m. and kicking off the mammoth set with “Block Party.”
The crowd went wild at the mere sight of these jukebox heroes, with some of the longtime fans surely remembering the days when they carried around New Kids lunchboxes and had posters of the band plastered all over their walls. (Actually, judging from the reaction, maybe a lot of these fans still carry around the New Kids lunchboxes and have the posters plastered all over their walls.)
From there, the band continued through “My Favorite Girl,” “Dirty Dancing” and four other numbers before disappearing offstage. That worked out great for me, since I’m usually ready for something else — like Gojira or Ornette Coleman — after listening to a half-dozen or so NKOTB cuts. Yet, instead of French heavy metal or avant-garde jazz, we’d get to hear from En Vogue — which ended up working just as well.
The multiplatinum-selling Oakland vocal trio — currently featuring Terry Ellis, Cindy Herron and Rhona Bennett — performed two of its most amazing hits, “Never Gonna Get It” and “Free Your Mind,” before passing the baton over to Rick Astley.
The English crooner sounded amazing, delivering the best vocal work of the night as he delighted fans with “Together Forever” and “It Would Take a Strong Strong Man.”
Then NKOTB returned, working the crowd with a medley of tunes, before turning thing over to the legendary Salt-N-Pepa — who used the showcase to illustrate once again why they should have been enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a long time ago.
The highlight of this Salt-N-Pepa mini set came when the hip-hop duo was joined by En Vogue to relive the 1993 triumph “Whatta Man.”
The acts performed across two stages — a large one with a catwalk and smaller one set up on the other side of the arena floor. That allowed the artists to come and go without any breaks in the action: as the lights would go down on one stage, they would go up on the other.
The New Kids were certainly on top of their game on this night — even though, in 2022, that basically translates into being “The Donnie Wahlberg Show.” Yes, it’s been that way for years now, but I don’t remember the stage being quite this tilted ever before.
The singer, who is also a TV and movie star, is a force of nature who dominates the spotlight with his personality, humor, interactions with the crowd, dance moves and singing. It’s a good thing that he brings so much to the party, since there would be quite a vacuum to file if he didn’t. Yet, I can’t help but wonder what the other members — Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Danny Wood and Jonathan Knight — might contribute if Wahlberg actually gave them some room to do so.
The concert kept getting better as the night progressed, with En Vogue, Astley and Salt-N-Pepa returning to deliver more hits while the New Kids continued to draw from their own deep catalog.
The whole cast was back at the end of the concert for an all-star performance of NKOTB’s memorable new single “Bring Back the Time,” as every Warriors fan in the building erupted in applause for the guys wearing Celtics jerseys.
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