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  FRESH AIR: I’m Terry Gross. My guest Loudon Wainwright seems to have been an imperfect partner, husband and father. But he’s written remarkable songs about family and how we hurt and heal each other only to do it all over again. Now in his new memoir, Liner Notes, he writes in more detail about his life as a husband, father, son, philanderer and musician. His first wife, Kate McGarrigle, was a singer-songwriter, too. And she wrote songs about their relationship from her point of view. Their two children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, are now well-known singer-songwriters. Loudon had a […]

  FRESH AIR: If John le Carré’s espionage novels seem particularly authentic, it may be because the author has first-hand experience. Le Carré worked as a spy for the British intelligence services MI5 and MI6 early in his writing career, and only left the field after his third book, 1963’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, became an international best-seller. Le Carré’s latest book, A Legacy of Spies, revisits some of the characters from his earlier novels, including his most famous protagonist, George Smiley. It follows a protégé of Smiley’s, Peter Guillam, as he re-examines some of his […]

  GQ: Among the friends he reconnected with that summer was Joseph “Joey” Meek, who knew Dylann in middle school. Meek, a young white man with bloated chipmunk cheeks, had a serious marijuana habit and a permissive mother who had been asked by Amy years before to encourage the boys’ friendship. When Roof found him again, Joey was living in a rented trailer in the unincorporated area outside Columbia with his mother, his girlfriend, Lindsay Fry, and his two younger brothers, Justin and Jacob. As the summer passed, Dylann would start to crash there at times. Later, Joey would do […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This essay originally appeared in Philadelphia Magazine in 2012. It’s no less true today. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Time is short, and Labor Day weekend is almost upon us, so I will cut to the chase: Made In America, the genre-bending, two-day concert curated by Jay-Z and sponsored by Budweiser to be held on Ben Franklin Parkway on Saturday and Sunday, should be made a free concert, and all ticket holders refunded the full ticket price PLUS the $15 in service charges. Why? There are many good reasons, not the least of which is it would create the kind […]

  NEW YORKER: For decades, jazz musicians have joked about Schaap’s adhesive memory, but countless performers have known the feeling that Schaap remembered more about their musical pasts than they did and was always willing to let them in on the forgotten secrets. “Phil is a walking history book about jazz,” Frank Foster, a tenor-sax player for the Basie Orchestra, told me. Wynton Marsalis says that Schaap is “an American classic.” In the eyes of his critics, Schaap’s attention to detail and authenticity is irritating and extreme. He has won six Grammy Awards for his liner notes and producing efforts, […]