Bartek's career started while at William Howard Taft High School in Woodland Hills, California, writing songs and playing flute with the psychedelic rock band Strawberry Alarm Clock.
After college he worked at the Baked Potato with Leon Gaer under the leadership of Don Randi until joining the theatrical ensemble The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo in 1975, where he met his collaborator Danny Elfman.
Bartek has composed music for television series including The Tick, Tales from the Crypt, Nightmare Ned and Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories, and movies including An Extremely Goofy Movie, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Romy and Michele: In the Beginning, Snow Day, Novocaine, the 1998 remake of Psycho and The Art of Travel.
[citation needed] Bartek provided the soundtrack for Donovan Cook's indie film Rideshare: The Movie, alongside former Oingo Boingo member Johnny "Vatos" Hernandez.
[2] Bartek also contributed music to both the ride queue and exit of Disneyland's short-lived Rocket Rods attraction in 1998, including a synthesizer arrangement of Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" and "World of Creativity (Magic Highways of Tomorrow)", the latter being a radical re-arrangement of "Detroit", a song originally written and composed by the Sherman Brothers for the 1967 Disney film, The Happiest Millionaire.