The other day I mentioned the Beaver Avenue Beggars, a band I used to listen to up in State College. I failed to mention, however, one of the best and most popular music groups that Penn State has ever produced–Cartoon. They’ve been broken up for almost twenty years and yet they still get back together to play, mostly at Penn State’s Arts Festival in July. I’m partial to them because I like acoustic rock, but apparently a lot of other people are partial to them as well.
I remember visiting Elaine Zaleski (now Elaine McCarty) at Penn State in 1983 and going into a record store where she bought an album called Native State by Cartoon. I didn’t listen to the album, but the group stuck in my mind. Six years later, I had the chance to listen to a Cartoon reunion concert at the Arts Festival, and I loved it. I bought a great two-album Cartoon cassette that I literally wore out a few years later. When CD burners came on the scene, I thought about trying to transfer the tape to CD, but I never had all the right pieces to digitize the songs.
Later, though, the Internet saved the day. A Google search for the heck of it one day turned up this Cartoon website. Better yet, the website had CDs for sale of the songs I wanted. I bought both CDs and had my Cartoon fix again. Now I see on the website that they have a third CD for sale. It’s on my list to get in the next few weeks.
Cartoon rocks.