Sweatin’ to the oldies: Green Day thrills in small hall Vegas show

It’s hot, sweaty and packed tight, like fingers squeezed into gloves a couple sizes too small.

You can’t even move in here, really, though no one seems to want to anyway.

On stage, Billie Joe Armstrong’s striped shirt is already damp with perspiration 15 minutes into the show as he leans into his instrument the way a drunk leans into the bar: hard.

Bent over at the knees, his guitar nearly scraps the stage as the Green Day frontman summons up a squall of sound that leads into one of the most well-known bass-lines of the 1990s, which serves as the intro to “Longview,” a generational anthem about couch surfing on a tidal wave of boredom.

“Bite my lip and close my eyes,” Armstrong sings on a chorus that everyone here knows by heart, echoing his voice with theirs. “Take me away to paradise.”

Scan the room, look at all the smiles slicked across the moist faces that fill the place, and you’d think we were already there.

It’s Thursday night at the Fremont Country Club, and the biggest punk band ever is playing a venue around the size of one of the stadium dressing rooms they’ve occupied in the past.

This weekend, Green Day will headline the punk and emo-centered When We Were Young fest in front of tens of thousands at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds.

Before then, though, comes a warm-up gig surprised-announced the day before —with the emphasis on the warm.

The stage is dressed like the album cover to “Dookie,” Green Day’s third release and punk’s all-time top-selling album, complete with a cut-out “Bad Year” blimp and “Dookie” bombs suspended from the rafters.

Tonight, the band will celebrate its 30th anniversary — kinda, sorta, the album was tracked in September-October 1993 and released the following February — by playing it front-to-back, ripping through its 39-minute running-length in what seems like half the time, even playing hidden CD track “All By Myself,” where drummer Tre Cool grabs a guitar and takes the mic.

Speaking of When We Were Young, it probably wouldn’t even exist without the album in question, which launched pop-punk into the mainstream, paving the way for the mid-’90s punk boom that inspired countless offspring, scads of which will perform at the fest.

The album’s timing was key: It hit shelves right when grunge began to fade from its commercial prime, offering something of an alternative to the alternative rock of the day. Instead of dark and brooding, their songs were bright-sounding and brooding, one shout-along after the next about being strung out on confusion instead of being strung out on the considerably more lethal — yet no less mind-numbing — substances that too many in the Seattle scene succumbed to.

Basically, it was the same alienation, different tempo.

“Dookie” made Green Day superstars, and in subsequent years, they’d broaden their worldview significantly, swapping the microcosmic (inward-looking songs about giving oneself the creeps) for the macrocosmic (outward-looking rock operas that picked at societal scabs.)

On Thursday, the band delved into every era of their 36-year career, from early pop-punk baby steps (“Disappearing Boy,” “One of My Lies”) to latter-day, rock and roll leaps of faith (“Revolution Radio;” “Last Night on Earth”).

They peered into the future as well: after Armstrong announced that Green Day would embark on a big tour next year with the Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and others, the band gave new tune “The American Dreams is Killing Me” its live debut.

The band’s two-hour, 29-song setlist was as novel as the room in which they played: skipping concert staples like “American Idiot,” “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” Green Day instead aired deeper album cuts like “Nuclear Family” and “Oh Love,” some of which they hadn’t performed in a decade, while also playing “Graffitia” for the first time.

It was a lot to take in, especially considering the setting: one over-heated crowd-member feinted briefly, and perhaps the most popular dude in the room not on stage was the guy in the back waving a hand-fan.

Still, most everyone stayed until the end, and when the band concluded with “Homecoming,” that’s exactly what this night felt like.

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram