The Dead want it all

Carrie Brownstein was putting together an online mix for her NPR blog, and wanted to include a Grateful Dead track. She politely asked permission. And the response?

they refused unless we promised to do a piece on them on All Things Considered. In addition, we would need to run a feature on The Dead on the site. 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?!

You don't even have to scratch a hippy very hard to find the hard-nosed pigopolistic pig underneath, do you?