Back when I began learning how to play guitar in the fall of 1982, there were two guitar magazines: Guitar Player, and Guitar World. Guitar Player was more established; it started life in the late 1960s, first covering the psychedelic guitarists in its Bay Area backyard, then the Brit superstars of the 1970s (Clapton! Beck! Page! Frampton! Richards! Townshend! Et al.), but its heart seemed to be in the jazz world. A heroin and Jack Daniels-ravaged pipe cleaner-thin Jimmy Page with his Danelectro slung low bashing out “Kashmir” at 190 decibels may have been on its cover, but its heart was set on telling you how Howard Roberts fingered second inversion E flat 11th sharp suspended fourth chords at the sixth fret position.

Guitar World was (and is) Guitar Player’s upstart competitor, and it was looser, funkier. It loved rockers. It wasn’t trying to climb into the inner workings of the Tritone scale; it wanted to show you how to play the solo to “Stairway To Heaven”.

An early issue had Les Paul on the cover though, which had plenty of crossover value: my dad loved Les because he had played with Crosby; I loved Les because Page, Beck, Townshend and Keef all played his signature guitar.

As I may have mentioned before, back in 2002, after I interviewed Les myself in New York (for articles that appeared online in Blogcritics and Catholic Exchange and on dead tree in Vintage Guitar), I asked Les to autograph my battered copy of his 1983 Guitar World cover story, and he was delighted to do so. (Les will autograph anything--just search through eBay to see how many of his guitars he’s autographed over the years after his second Monday net set.) I made a color photocopy of that cover and framed it, as a reminder of the distance I travelled since when I began playing.

Flashforward to two weeks ago in Texas. While Nina and I were out Christmas shopping, we stopped in the Barnes & Noble in Waco, and I picked up the February issue of Guitar World. It’s out in December, so it has a Holiday-themed cover with Ozzy’s longtime gunslinger Zack Wylde on the cover dressed as Santa, and Billy Barty’s Mini-Me dressed as one his elves.

Oh, and it has three of my articles, which I wrote early this fall.

(Best. Christmas. Ever.)

There’s my history of Carvin, the San Diego-based guitar and amplifier builder, an interview with the fellows who designed and built this incredible Stratocaster variation, and a brief interview with actor Steven Seagal, who’s now dividing his time between Kung Fu-ing bad guys in the movies, and singing the blues. And owns something like 300 vintage guitars, including a superb “Black Beauty” Les Paul Custom from the mid-1950s, and at least two of the late Albert King’s Flying-Vs.

So if you see Santa and his favorite elf on the cover of Guitar World this month, look for me in there as well.