The Fool or The Jester is one of the 78 cards in a Tarot deck; one of the 22 Trump cards that make up the Major Arcana. The Fool is unnumbered; sometimes represented as 0 (the first) or XXII (the last) Major Arcana in decks. It is used in divination as well as in game playing.

Iconography

The Fool is titled Le Mat in the Tarot of Marseilles, and Il Matto in most Italian language tarot decks. These archaic words mean "the madman" or "the beggar", and may be related to the word for 'checkmate' in relation to the original use of tarot cards for gaming purposes.

In the earliest Tarot decks, the Fool is usually depicted as a beggar or a vagabond. In the Visconti-Sforza tarot deck, the Fool wears ragged clothes and stockings without shoes, and carries a stick on his back. He has what appear to be feathers in his hair. His unruly beard and feathers may relate to the tradition of the woodwose or wild man. Another early Italian image that relates to the tradition is the first (and lowest) of the series of the so-called "Tarocchi of Mantegna". This series of prints containing images of social roles, allegorical figures, and classical deities begins with "Misero", a depiction of a beggar leaning on a staff. A similar image is contained in the German Hofamterspiel; there the fool (German: Narr) is depicted as a barefoot man in robes, apparently with bells on his hood, playing a bagpipe.

Fool, The Fool, or Fools may refer to:

Fool, The Fool, or Fools may also refer to:

Theatre

Games and Tarot

Literature

Food

Film

Music

Noah Raymond Brickley (born February 10, 1978), better known by his stage name Noah23, is a Canadian-American hip hop artist from Guelph, Ontario, currently based in Los Angeles, California. He is co-founder of the Plague Language collective and record label, and has been described as "one of Canada's best, most underrated MCs".

Career

Noah Raymond Brickly was born in 1978 in Natchez, Mississippi, and moved to Guelph, Ontario at the age of 4. He began rapping in the early 1990s and released his first album, originally entitled Plague Language, in 1999. This album, initially released on cassette, was remastered and released on CD in 2006 under the name Cytoplasm Pixel.

In the late 1990s, Noah23 started the record label Plague Language with producer Orphan (real name Kingston Maguire, who went on to become one half of production duo Blue Sky Black Death). In the early 2000s the Plague Language label released music from artists such as Baracuda,Livestock,Orko the Sycotik Alien,Penny, The Main, and Madadam. In 2004, following the departure of Orphan, the label entered into a period of indefinite hiatus. Plague Language continues to exist, however, as both an imprint on associated Canadian label Legendary Entertainment and as a loose collective of Guelph-based hip-hop artists.

Fool's Parade is the fifth solo album by Peter Wolf, released in 1998 (see 1998 in music). The album was named one of the Essential Recordings of the '90s by Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner.

Track listing

Personnel

There are several distinct, although overlapping categories of fool as a stock character in creative works (literature, film, etc.) and folklore: simpleton fool, clever fool, and serendipitous fool.

Silly fool

A silly, stupid, simpleton, luckless fool is a butt of numerous jokes and tales all over the world.

Sometimes the foolishness is ascribed to a whole place, as exemplified by the Wise Men of Gotham. The localizing of fools is common to most countries, and there are many other reputed imbecile centres in England besides Gotham. Thus there are the people of Coggeshall, Essex, the "carles" of Austwick, Yorkshire, the "gowks" of Gordon, Berwickshire, and for many centuries the charge of folly has been made against silly Suffolk and Norfolk (Descriptio Norfolciensium about twelfth century, printed in Wright's Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems).

In Germany there are the "Schildburgers", from the fictitious town of "Schilda"; in the Netherlands, the people of Kampen; in Bohemia, the people of Kocourkov; and in Moravia the people of Šimperk. There are also the Swedish Täljetokar from Södertälje and Kälkborgare from Kälkestad, and the Danish tell tales of the foolish inhabitants of the Molboland. In Latin America, the people of Galicia are the butt of many jokes. In Spain, the people of Lepe, a town in Andalusia, follow a similar fate. Among the ancient Greeks, Boeotia was the home of fools; among the Thracians, Abdera; among the ancient Jews, Nazareth; among modern Jews, Chełm; among the ancient Asiatics, Phrygia.

"Fool (If You Think It's Over)" is the title of a popular song from 1978 by the British singer-songwriter Chris Rea. Rea also wrote the song, which appears on his 1978 debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?

Background

"Fool (If You Think It's Over)" was the lead single from Rea's debut album Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? which was recorded at producer Gus Dudgeon's Thames Valley recording studio The Mill. Rea, who wrote the song as an advisement to his teenage sister who professed herself devastated at losing her first boyfriend, would say of "Fool...": "I’d always seen it as a Memphis [soul] song [but] I never had the chance to voice my opinion about what I thought about the production": Rea has also stated that "Fool..." is the only track he ever recorded that he did not play guitar on (he did play keyboards). The background vocals on the track are by Rea and the album's assistant engineer Stuart Epps.

Unsuccessful in its initial UK single release in March 1978, "Fool..." was afforded a June 1978 release in the US where it entered the Top 40 of the Hot 100 singles chart in Billboard magazine in July 1978 to reach a #12 peak on the Hot 100 dated 16 September 1978, then being in the second week of a three-week tenure at #1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart. On the strength its US success Rea was invited to perform "Fool..." on the 28 September 1978 TOTP broadcast which evidently facilitated a belated UK chart run for the single with an 28 October 1978 peak of #30.

The Fool is a 1964 Gibson SG guitar, painted for Eric Clapton by the Dutch design collective of the same name. One of the world's best-known guitars, it symbolizes the psychedelic era. Clapton used the guitar extensively while playing with Cream and it was an important element of his famed "woman tone".

History

The Fool, a "psychedelic fantasy", according to Clapton, was the brainchild of Marijke Koger who, along with Simon Postuma, was a founding member of The Fool collective. In early 1967, the collective were contacted by Robert Stigwood, then manager of Cream, to work on instruments and costumes for the band, which was about to leave London for a tour of the United States. Koger and Postuma painted Clapton's Gibson SG, a drum kit for Ginger Baker, and a Fender Bass VI for Jack Bruce, which he did not like very much and played only on TV performances.

The guitar made its debut as Cream played their first show in the United States on 25 March 1967 at the RKO theater on 58th Street, Manhattan, where Cream and The Who played a series of shows headlined by Mitch Ryder and promoted by Murray the K. Clapton used the guitar for most of Cream's recordings after Fresh Cream, particularly on Disraeli Gears, until the band broke up in 1968. After Clapton it passed to Jackie Lomax, who may have acquired it from George Harrison. It then passed to Todd Rundgren, who had seen Clapton play it during Cream's show at the RKO Theater and was "mesmerized" by it. Rundgren reportedly paid $500 for the guitar and had various repairs done to it. He had the guitar finished anew and retouched in places, and a portion of the neck and headstock was replaced. Rundgren sold the guitar in 2000 at auction for around $150,000 to pay off a tax debt, donating 10% to Clapton's Crossroads Centre. The Fool was resold to a private collector a few years later for around $500,000.