Circa approximately 2010 - 2013, I was quite obsessed with the UK reissue label, Ace Records. And to say "quite" really doesn't do my fixation justice. I guess a caveat I must note here is that from 2012 - 2015, I was also the label's manager here in Australia, which basically means looking after all their distribution business in the territory. T'was fun while it lasted, and they were an excellent bunch to deal with.

The Ace label has been on my mind a bit lately, after an extended absence from my peripherals. The first reason it reentered was because, having re-read Jon Savage's England's Dreaming recently (noted a few entries ago here), I was surprised to see how heavily its two founders, Ted Carroll and Roger Armstrong, feature in the book, and how important their various market stalls and eventually stores were as a centre of activity in a pre- and post-punk London.

Secondly, I've had much of my CD collection boxed up for two whole years now, for reasons too boring to go into, and now that they've recently been unboxed and shelved, I can behold my ridiculous collection of Ace titles in all their glory - well over 250 of the goddamn things - and enjoy them once more. I should note here that the label were very generous to their commercial partners, and basically anything you requested as a freebie, they'd be happy to oblige. And I requested a lot.

Thirdly, in my spacial rearranging, I discovered my copy of the 2007 book by journalist David Stubbs, detailing the history of the label over 190 pages in the A4 format. It's part of Black Dog Publishing's "Labels Unlimited" series, and I also have the Rob Young-penned history of the Rough Trade label, which is another great read. All three of these events have conspired at once and had me thinking: what a great fucking label Ace is.

The book itself doesn't even get to Ace until page 53; prior to that is covered mainly Ted Carroll's earlier days managing Thin Lizzy (before they broke big) and prog-folkies Mellow Candle (whose sole LP from 1972, Swaddling Songs, is a real good one) and the market stalls and hoovering up of old rock & roll/rockabilly/doo-wop/blues/R & B records in the early '70s, when such things were out of print and largely out of fashion. And before Ace, there was the Chiswick label. 

Chiswick began in 1975 and operated until the early '80s, for a time in conjunction with Ace itself, but was far less focussed, and really much less impressive as an aesthetic whole than what came after. There's significant releases by Motorhead, The 101ers, Count Bishops, and The Damned's best album (Machine Gun Etiquette), as well as a megahit or two by MOR schlockers, Sniff 'n' The Tears, and many a sundry New Waver, but mostly it comes across like a hodge-podge of aiming for hits and largely missing the mark in regards to commerce and the music I care to listen to. The Ace label was focussed on bringing light to the sounds of yesteryear in a fresh way, demanding quality in sound, presentation, music and annotation, and for American post-war music of the "rockin'" variety in its many permutations, no one's done it better.

One interesting point of note about Ace - and I'm probably just speaking to myself here, because you're probably not interested at all - is that it chooses to pay its artists on time, every time - even those whose music falls within the public domain. Now that the UK is out of the EU, I'm not even sure what their public domain laws are, but prior to Brexit and up until 2013 when the major labels took it to the courts to stop the 50-year rule being the standard (i.e. - you can reproduce and commercially exploit a piece of music at will after 50 years from its original recording), anything made in 1963 or prior was up for grabs. Hence why there's a thousand different versions of Link Wray, Howlin' Wolf, Bill Evans, '50s Miles, etc., etc. emanating from a thousand different European micro-labels exploiting this law. 

The big conglomerates suddenly saw how much they had to lose if such public-domain laws were to apply to the Beatles (and all post-Beatles popular music - the back catalogue that keeps them afloat)'s catalogue and managed to put a stop to it. Had they not, in 2023, there would be a hundred different, possibly awful but perfectly legitimate versions of Exile On Main Street, Funhouse, Bitches Brew, Here Comes The Warm Jets - ET-FUCKING-CETERA - flooding the universe.

I don't like defending major labels in general, but I get their point. Not getting paid for your music 50 years later, when the average age of death in the west is 80+ and musicians/songwriters still need money in their old-age, doesn't really sit right in 2023, much as the gatekeepers aren't worthy of defending for all their other, awful practices. And in Australia, public domain only exists 75 years after the death of the songwriter, so those Europeans have it easy. Anyway! Where was I? Did I go off on a tangent? The point being: the vast bulk of Ace's catalogue sits within the public domain sphere, and yet they still pay. Hats off to them.

The Ace label has pretty much well and truly mined all the great stuff for the kinds of things they do which I happen to really dig. Let me word that slightly better so you can understand what I actually mean. For the musical worlds of '40s/'50s jump-blues/rockabilly/R & B/blues/swamp-pop and the like, unless some sort of amazing and unheard-of discovery is made, which is quite unlikely, just about anything of worth in these genres has already been remastered, repackaged and released - much of it by Ace itself (with all due credit to the JSP label, too). 

I felt that this aspect of the label's catalogue was starting to run on fumes a decade ago, and they've slightly switched focus more and more towards soul, jazz and even some post-punk (there's some nice Jon Savage comps you should be familiar with) and prog (cue the voluminous and excellent Bob Stanley compilations of the past decade). In short, Ace has moved with the times, or as much as a large independent record company which specialises in repackaging and reinvigorating the past to make it new can in the here and now, because they remain quite adamant that Ace has never been about nostalgia.

So what's the point of all this? Nothing in particular. It's a tip of the hat to one of the greatest record labels ever. Stubbs' book is far from perfect - there's some sloppy spelling and grammatical errors which I'm surprised weren't picked up - and I would've liked more info about Ace's label acquisitions, which they moved heavily into later on as an alternative to licensing, but these are small-fry complaints. The Ace label's attention to detail is second to none, and if you're at all interested in what happened beneath the surface of post-war popular music, their catalogue tells the best story. Long may it live.

(Pictured throughout this entry are just some of my favourite Ace releases)