By Maura Johnston Globe correspondent, Updated July 16, 2022, 2:56 p.m.
There was a point early in Friday’s stop on the Mixtape Tour where New Kids on the Block, the five-man vocal group anchoring these four-act bills, just stood still on the TD Garden stage, not talking, just surveying the frenzied crowd. The night was only about five songs into what would be a 2½-plus-hour show. But confetti cannons had already been fired multiple times, and the audience was in the mood to shower Jonathan Knight, Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, and Danny Wood — who came together in Boston nearly 40 years ago — with the sort of adulation that you’d see at the end of a night, not near its beginning.