Three Weekend Tales.

One. A Lost Friend (Friday night).

He's not a long lost friend. Rather an old friend, a good friend, a friend whose life had intersected with mine with a hundred different links and triggers, a friend whose story will, when he remembers his twenties from the vantage-point of old age, intractably also be mine. And yet, for the most part, we don't speak.

I think it is always with the good friends that we lose contact. In these circumstances, 'friends' is just another form of relationship, one with its closeness and dependance, and its pride and hurt. I hear he refers to me as a kind of ex-girlfriend. A moment of awkwardness, a display of animosity, can destroy what took years to build. Just like in a relationship, one harsh word, one heated argument or (in this case) a spitefully-phrased e-mail can set a tone from which we can never recover.

And yet I was tapped on the shoulder on Friday night, and heard a familiar call: 'So we meet again, at another Sonic Youth show.' Two years ago, we travelled to Melbourne to see Sonic Youth. Now we were just two faces in the crowd. And we shared that night again - a night, given the age of the 'Youth and the fact that they were playing 1989's Daydream Nation in full, that was all about celebrating the past - but once the crowd began to leave the arena, we once again parted, made our apologies the following day, and went back to letting a history of awkward grievances make us anonymous again.

Two. Exclusive Information (Saturday).

I meet many people while drunk. One night, at a favoured local haunt in the early hours of morning, I met a man who began asking for advice about breaking up with his girlfriend. Having been in this position before, I offered advice which was stern, but kind. On Saturday, I spotted him in the crowd, said a cheery hello. He promptly introduced me to his girlfriend. I was polite, affable, but just a little reserved. After all, I know something she does not.

Laneway crowd scene with bonus Okkervil River - photo courtesy of Carly.

Three. Mr E's Beautiful Gay Strippers (Saturday night).

10pm. We're inside the small Laneway Festival venue now, escaping Gotye's brazen display of electronic genius in order to catch the stoner spectacular of Devastations. Suddenly, a tall ginger man with an American accent demands to know how he knows me. He's surprised to find I don't share his Atlantic drawl. He tells me he thought he'd met me in Detroit. In a gay nightclub. Offerring dollar bills to male strippers.

Between tears of laughter, my friend Carly and I assure him that I have never even visited Detroit, let alone participated in its thriving gay stripper scene. Then he pauses, reflects, and gasps in a visceral eureka! moment. 'That's it!', he cries. 'You totally look like E from The Eels!'

Incidentally, although he's now the third person to tell me this, I don't think I look a thing like E from The Eels.

Also incidentally, Sonic Youth's Daydream... set was incredible, phenomenal, breathtaking, and far better than the Rather Ripped tour in 2006. The Laneway Festival offerred a slow-burning, brilliant set by the always-amazing Okkervil River, and a spectacular show by the talented, beautiful, guitar-shredding alto-warbling Feist. The Fringe opening night - which I saw before Sonic Youth, and to which I returned after, was well-orchestrated but ruined by competing with lost crowds of Clipsal 500 petrolheads. Whoever scheduled two such diametrically-opposed events not one kilometre away from each other on the same night should be terminated immediately.

And despite my intentions of heavy Saturday night drinking, everyone had gone home by 1am. Really, what is it with you people?

Fringe Opening Night, Rundle Street.

For more photos from Friday night, click here.