Release Date: February 7, 2005

Beautiful Dry Cleaning By was originally released in Norway under the title, Ray S. Hussalonia, an allusion to entertainment mogul, and former Hussalonia manager, Ray S. Kneeland. Two weeks after its release the Kneeland estate took legal action, stating the songs were slanderous to the Kneeland name (which continues to thrive due to the success of Ray's line of fried chicken restaurants). This accusation was probably provoked by the now deleted titles "Ray S. Kneeland, you are a criminal" and "Fried Chicken will make you fat like Ray S. Kneeland". Famed Hollywood lawyer Antonio Thatcher settled the case out of court. All unsold copies were destroyed. Norwegians lucky enough to buy a copy of the original release enjoyed 10 tracks of epic, fuzzed-out, manic pop insanity. (Copies continue to circulate on the bootleg circuit.) Only 3 of the 10 original tracks survive on this re-release ("God Save The Queen City", "Last Night I Dreamt I Had No Dreams" and "There Goes The Rest Of My Life"). Other tracks can only be provided in demo form ("Keep It Down" and "Escape Artist"). And in the absence of the deleted tracks, the record was fleshed out with several stripped down personal accounts of Hussalonia founder Jesse Mank's hometown of Buffalo, NY (the Queen City of Western New York).

On a final note, the last track ("The Letter In Her Pocket") was added due to pressure from Vladimir Renskoff, an executive at HRC (Hussalonia Record Company), to liven up the record. "This record is too dark! You must make this end with something hopeful!" he famously wrote in a letter to Helen De Soto, Head of Interpersonal Affairs at HRC. She then contacted Peter Van Krinko who then subpoenaed the entire catalog of unreleased Hussalonia material and chose the said track as a compromise.

Beautiful Dry Cleaning By is packaged in a white paperboard sleeve with elegant printing on both sides. The disc itself (silver back CD-R) is protected by an additional white paper sleeve, much like your vinyl records were when you used to be passionate about music.

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