Taylor Dayne concert brings crowd to its feet

Music review

Friday night in Bangor, people went to a concert and a dance broke out.

That’s because Taylor Dayne was the feature attraction in the concert held at the Bangor Auditorium.

Dayne’s energy, powerful vocals and pulsing dance music propelled concertgoers out of their seats and onto their feet.

Dayne’s set started slowly enough. After an unconscionable 35-minute wait following the opening set by the Party, Dayne and her six-member band took the stage, as she launched into the title song from her current album, “Can’t Fight Fate.”

Dayne, dressed in a tight black jumpsuit and a black fringed jacket, got the small audience of 1,700 involved early with a singalong to her 1988 hit “Don’t Rush Me.”

Another crowd-pleaser was the following song, her recent hit, “With Every Beat of My Heart.”

While Dayne was bounding all around the stage during dance numbers, she took another tack on the ballads “I’ll Always Love You” and “Love Will Lead You Back,” as she invested all her emotion into dynamic vocals.

Yet the evening reached another level as Dayne doffed her jacket and sprang into “I’ll Be Your Shelter.” That brought many in the audience to their feet, and some headed down the aisles toward the stage, where they were headed off by security personnel.

The songs “Prove Your Love,” “Up All Night” and the encore “Tell It To My Heart” kept the crowd happy and on their feet.

Opening act The Party is supposed to be Disney’s answer to The New Kids on the Block. Like the Prefab Five, the Party depends on wholesome good looks, choreography and taped music.

The quintet offered some flashy hip-hop dance moves, acrobatics and youthful enthusiasm, almost enough to overcome their rather generic bubblegum dance music. Still the Party gave their adolescent fans what they came for, and even converted a few indifferent adults.