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.