This homemade 1989 debut by rock & roll storyteller Tom Anderson was heard essentially by a handful of critics and praised by all of them. "Alright It Was Frank" captures the nervous joys of livin' in the USA by visiting a kind of "Our Town" as imagined by a benign David Lynch. On vignettes such as "She Looks Like Rickie Lee Jones," "Marilyn Says" and "For Charlie and Liz," UFOs, femme fatales, and lusty professors inhabit a vaudeville dreamscape. With compassion and wit, Anderson makes his characters live and breathe. Anderson's second album, "Blues for the Flying Dutchman" (1992), continues the magic realism: Bill Haley, the New York Dolls and Mickey Mantle all show up, as Anderson fashions a hip, generous, sweet Americana. Kudos to Dutch East India for reissuing these gems (Dutch East India, PO. Box 800, Rockville Centre, NY 11571-0800). (RS 677)

PAUL EVANS