Makes sense. Whenever I modify the FoF source, I mark all my changes with comments so it's easy to find them again.
I think year in song.ini was added in 2.909 (http://www.fretsonfire.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=11;t=24664;st=1480#entry258384). I can't find the practice BG, but it should be easy to find if you search the code for the filename of the practice BG.