And another thintg that pi*ses me off...

when did the Americans decide it might actually not be a bad idea to put dates on their record labels??

most British stuff from the 60's i have is dated - most USA stuff is not dated until the 70's.

when did this happen and why i.e. was it regulatory in the UK to date them.

can any one explain?

And is there any one i can write to to complain?

Mercury did date a lot of their releases in the U.S. the late 50's. I guess no one else thought it was a good idea.

If you find out who to complain to, let me know, I'll drop them a line too .

...and then there's the folk that decided to hand-write a date on a disc causing mass confusion later on for all of us...was it the date they received it, the intended release date or the date they had to go to the hairdressers!?!

the reason most US records aren't dated is that there's no reason for them to be dated. People didn't think anyone would care 30-40 years later.

There's still people who confuse copyright dates with release dates. Cameo 45s (the mid 60s 'cameo' label design) were not all released in 1963!

That being said, 85% of US pressed records can be ID'ed to the month of release through pressing code info and cross referencing old trade mags.

- George