Both Portishead and Kraftwerk, who played before Prince, managed to fill Coachella’s huge outdoor space with arresting music and incredible visuals–I’d last seen Kraftwerk ten years ago at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, and I’d forgotten just how striking the tableau presented by the simple pieces of art and their stock-still figures was, while Portishead used the giant space to do their show on Thursday night one better, thanks to the giant Beth-on-Beth images provided by the screens flanking the mainstage. (Audio here.) But were the planes flying overhead that had ads for upcoming albums (by Cut Copy, Robyn, and Elbow, among others) running LED-style across the bottom of their wings really a good use of jet fuel? I understand that “annoyvertising” is super-good at emblazoning things on the brains of people who are within its immediate sphere, but the one thing I really wanted to do last night was listen to Portishead’s set while staring up at the stars. And the constant ads kind of killed my chance to do that (and seemed more than a little misguided, given that most of the people in the crowd were probably in the “illegal acquirer” demographic anyway). Boooo. [Photo: AP]