Former Sleater-Kinner guitarist Carrie Brownstein is at the center of the latest accusation against the Grateful Dead. Brownstein was recently asked to compile a playlist for NPR’s Monitor Mix, which streams tracks from an artist’s personal playlist online. As expected, Brownstein’s mix covered an eclectic mix of material, from Television to The Libertines to The Small Faces. Brownstein also hoped to include the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” on her playlist, but, according to her blog , the group didn’t grant her permission to stream the track. According to one of Brownstein’s recent blog entry:  “This mix was supposed to have the Grateful Dead on it, whose music I really love, but 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?!”

Brownstein’s blog has stirred a good amount of interest both online and in the national press. The Dead’s longtime publicist Dennis McNally told the L.A. Times he “knows nothing about it,” though certain licensing issues fall under the jurisdiction of the group’s label, Rhino. The group has made no official statement on the subject.