Afternoon everyone...Alex Skolnick is in our video studio right now doing a lesson on how to play "Practice What You Preach," as well as "More Than Meets the Eye," a track from Testament's upcoming album, The Formation of Damnation. Look for this lesson on the July issue CD-ROM, with a story on the new Testament album in the same issue (as well as the start of rhythm guitarist Eric Peterson's new Guitar World column!).

We've always been big fans of Alex's around here...he's one of the nicest guys we deal with, and is always happy to come up to the office to do a lesson whenever he's available. We don't even need to involve managers and publicists when it comes to Alex...wish there were more guys like Alex out there, believe me.

Having Alex here this afternoon made me realize that you all would probably be interested in seeing the Guitar World Office Guitar. It's a nifty white Gibson Les Paul Studio that we keep on hand specifically to have artists sign. We only started the process a few months ago, and in that time we've acquired sigs from Dave Mustaine, Yngwie Malmsteen, Mark Morton, John Petrucci, Rudy and Matthias from the Scorpions, and now Alex Skolnick.

Over time we plan to keep adding to it so that one day it becomes an invaluable item, loaded with signatures from all sorts of celebrity players. Maybe we'll give it away or have a charity raffle or something. And while I'm glad we're finally doing it, what really hurts is the fact that we've haven't been doing it for years and years! Imagine who we could have gotten in all this time...so many legendary players have passed through our doors, and we let them all leave with barely a handshake.

Oh well, live and learn.

JK