Did The Grateful Dead Shakedown NPR?

Just as I was chugging my morning cup of tea, Ace sent over a shocking piece from the LA Times’ blog about Carrie Brownstein and the Grateful Dead. Brownstein claims that she wanted to stream a Grateful Dead song in today’s Monitor Mix post, but was told the band refused unless NPR promised to do a piece on them on All Things Considered. In addition, NPR would need to run a feature on The Dead on the site. Are you kidding me?

But before we start throwing around blame, we must note that GD Publicist Dennis McNally told the Times that he “knows nothing about it.” McNally is extremely well-respected in the biz, and has always been extremely forthcoming with us; so we’ll wait before we start throwing stones. Meanwhile Brownstein gets her point across after describing the Grateful diss:

Here’s a sentence I’ve never written: Someone needs to take a bong hit and chill out. Just a simple “no thanks” would have sufficed. Are The Dead really in need of publicity? Because I swear there’s a dancing bear sticker on every third car I see in Portland. And now I’ve written a paragraph on them anyway, for free, not even in exchange for a song. Doesn’t that count?!

I really hope this is all a major misunderstanding, because the Dead were finally getting the respect they deserved from the Fader crowd. Getting a song on Monitor Mix, among the likes of Television, Wire and The Small Faces would have been a nice score for the Dead, too bad it looks like they didn’t see it that way.