Find Year From Day and Date.
Find year from day and date in seconds. Got an old flyer, poster or ticket stub that says “Sat. Oct. 7” but no year? Enter what’s printed and the TunaTronic shows every year that fits.
What yearwas this flyer?
Most flyers, posters and ticket stubs print the day and date but skip the year. Enter them exactly as printed and this finds every year where they line up.
Tips to Find Year From Day and Date on Old Flyers
The TunaTronic does the math, but a flyer usually leaves you more than one possible year. A date lands on the same weekday every 5, 6 or 11 years, so "Sat. Oct. 7" could be 1978, 1989 or 1995. Here's how to narrow it down.
Start with the decade buttons. If you know roughly when the scene or venue was active, click that decade and the list shrinks to one or two years.
Read the fine print. Phone numbers are gold. In Kansas, Lawrence and Topeka numbers switched from the 913 area code to 785 in 1997, so a 913 number on a local flyer points earlier. Ticket prices, "all ages / no alcohol" rules, Ticketmaster logos, email addresses and web addresses all help date a flyer too. A band name that only existed for a couple of years can settle it outright.
Check the neighbors. Flyers usually survive in stacks from the same stretch of years. If the one before it was 1989 and the one after it was 1990, you've got your answer.
No weekday printed? Leave "Day of the week" on "Not printed," and the grid shows what day that date fell on in every year. Match it against any other clue you've got.
Scan Your Flyers and Send Them In
Every flyer you can find year from day and date on is a show put back on the record. Paper crumbles, basements flood, and the people who were there start forgetting which night was which. I'm building an archive of Kansas punk and underground show flyers, starting with more than 470 from The Outhouse, and there are big gaps, especially from late 1993 to 1996.
If you've got a box of old flyers, scan them (a phone photo works if it's flat and well lit) and send them to dystopeka@gmail.com. Every one gets dated, cataloged and credited to the show it advertised.
Wondering who's the weirdo behind this flyer year calculator? For more Topeka punk history, read the interview with early Topeka punk Clay Galbraith, or the story of the time Black Flag came over and stayed at our cabin.
Further Reading: What Happened to the Rooms on Those Flyers
Half the venues printed on the flyers you're dating don't exist anymore. If you've ever wondered why, start here. Or go catch a show while there's still a room to catch it in.
Gimme Some Money.
The TunaTronic is free. No ads, no sign-up, no tracking you across the internet to sell you guitar strings. I built it because I was staring at hundreds of old show flyers that all said "Sat. Oct. 7" and not one of them bothered to print the damn year.
Somebody has to date this stuff before the paper crumbles and the people who were there forget which night was which. Every flyer that gets a year is a show that gets remembered, a band that gets its due, and a room that doesn't vanish without a trace.
But servers, domains and the hours spent squinting at 30-year-old photocopies don't pay for themselves. I cover it out of my own pocket.
So if this thing just solved a mystery for you, would it really hurt to throw me a few bones? Below are my donation routes.
Got a box of old flyers with no years on them? Run them through the TunaTronic, then send them my way through the contact form. The hunt is still on.
Every show happened on a real night. Now you can find out which one.
