Genesis Owusu comes home. Did the NRL nail its grand final pregame?

The Melbourne synth-pop legends roll into Woden this Saturday with a six-piece live band, keytars and synced visuals, playing their classic hits reworked for the Machine Remixes album. It's a seated club show, so you can make a night of it: dinner runs from 6:30pm before the 8pm show. Show-only tickets are $57.95, dinner and show $102.95.

Next Saturday, ANU throws an 80th birthday concert and the bill is pure Canberra pride. Headliner Genesis Owusu grew up here, and he's heading into the ARIAs with 8 nominations for Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge, tied for the most of anyone this year. Seeing him on home turf a month out from the ARIAs (Wed 18 Nov) is about as good as it gets.

Karnivool's In Verses went to No. 1 on the ARIA chart in February, their first album in 13 years, and now they're taking it beyond the capitals with Canberra on the run. Tickets went on sale Fri 2 Oct at 9am, so if you've been meaning to grab one, this is your nudge.

The 90s are coming to Bruce. LOOKOUT has given Canberra its own night at AIS Arena, and tickets are on sale now from $168.25 plus fees (GA $224.30). Doors 6pm.

No Canberra leg, but Sydney's Centennial Park is the easy road trip. Presale is this Wednesday, general sale Thursday, with first-release GA at $239.90.

The Australian Live Music Business Council wants gigs worth $5,000 or less exempt from performer super, saying the paperwork is crushing small venues and sole-trader musos, and 70% of people in its survey said the 12% is coming out of existing fees. On the other side, super has been owed to performers since 1992, and an MEAA survey found 82% of musicians had never been paid super for a gig at all. If you play or book gigs, today's your last chance to have your say.

After the Tones And I deal fell over, the NRL swapped a headline act for a tribute to Rabbitohs star Jai Arrow and former Wallaby Nathan Charles, who did a lap of honour before kick-off. Amy Shark opened with You'll Never Walk Alone, Screaming Jets frontman Dave Gleeson took on 4 Non Blondes' What's Up, and Grinspoon's Phil Jamieson joined them for The Best.

So, how did it land? Depends where you looked. The press was mostly warm: AAP said the pared-back show still went down well with the crowd at Accor Stadium, even if it lacked the wow factor of Kylie Minogue's AFL grand final set a week earlier, and Zero Tackle's live blog reckoned the NRL nailed it. The lead-up was messier: ARLC chair Peter V'landys said he'd rather put $1 million towards underprivileged kids playing footy than spend it on 11 minutes of entertainment, and not everyone agreed big-game music should be cut.

Whatever you made of the show, the performers donated their appearance fees to motor neurone disease causes, and that's a win in anyone's book. If you want to chip in too, FightMND takes donations below.

Online, it split hard. On X, the most-shared takes on Sunday night were digs at the NRL: one post calling it one of the weirdest pregame shows ever topped 100,000 views, and another ribbing Peter V'landys for talking up a fight with the AFL then serving this up passed 30,000. A small fan poll (95 votes) had three in four giving it the thumbs down.

Facebook wasn't much kinder. Under Rolling Stone AU/NZ's clip of the tribute (4,600 reactions and nearly 600 comments by Monday morning), the top comments mostly picked at the vocals, with pub karaoke comparisons and at least one Scouser unimpressed with the take on Liverpool's anthem. A handful pushed back, saying the moment was haunting and had them in tears.

Instagram was a different planet. Amy Shark's own reel of the lap, captioned "tonight felt real", had 8,300 likes and close to 600 comments, nearly all love hearts and messages of pride. Her followers are hardly neutral, but there was pushback on X too, with people pointing out the performers out-sang most of us and that the night was about Jai, not the setlist.