The Bad Penny (beta)

Do you know this man? You sure as hell ought to. Mike Patton, 57, is one of the most prolific musicians, record label owners, voice actors, film composers and producers in the underground.

It’d be inaccurate and a disservice to the music genius to qualify the last word in the last sentence as “underground rock”; the limitlessly adventurous–or, perhaps better put, creatively restless–virtuoso dabbles with virtually every music genre. A short list includes avant-garde, alt-metal, alt-rock, art pop, contemporary classical, funk metal, grindcore, heavy metal, indie rock, L.A. punk, noise-rock, ska-punk, sound collage, trip-hop and all varieties of experimental music.

More extensive than that seemingly never-ending list is the number of other artists and bands with whom one of California’s most prolific and peculiar wisenheimers has collaborated over the years. We won’t name them here, or list them in the tags for this article, because it’d spoil The Bad Penny‘s latest word search, a game doubling as a tribute to Michael Allen Patton in celebration of his 40 years making music.

Enjoy this, because–even though Patton hasn’t enjoyed The Bad Penny interviewing him, as evidenced here and here, and in another feature we’ll excavate from our archives sometime down the line–we still “care a lot” about our favorite acerbic, iconoclastic, contrarian oddball musician.

Twenty Patton-related clues are hidden in this puzzle: