Six Minute War – Six Minute War Records – 1980

Nurses / Youth Culture / Protect And Survive

So Sad / Guitarist / Sell Out

Six Minute War arrived on the scene in 1980, exploring minimal lengths as well as minimal lyrics and instrumentation. It might not be too wicked to call them the poorer relation to Crisis or the thinking man’s Heretics, but you get the idea. Their 11-song debut was entitled 33.3: the next release was More Short Songs (though there were only 5 of them and relatively long in 3 minutes a piece roughly). Their 4-track swansong was (naturally) Slightly Longer Songs. After that a couple of them ended up forming Fallout, and Rob Taylor later joined Andrew Beer in Concrete and 400 Blows.

The majority of these tracks were recorded at Street Level Studios and engineered by Kif Kif, who at that time had left Here And Now and was performing in 012. Both of these bands are featured on this site somewhere, as is more Fallout material.

My copy of this record was actually pressed up in 1984, the original release had the same sleeve but printed in plain black and white.

70 comments
  1. munchie63
    munchie63
    July 19, 2010 at 8:36 pm

    hi all.
    anyone know where i can get or download the classic ‘one of our guitarists is missing’ ?
    had it on an ep many years ago, and the lyrics still make me smile.

  2. gerard
    gerard
    July 19, 2010 at 10:42 pm

    at the top of the page 🙂 “guitarist”

  3. Norbert Valiant
    Norbert Valiant
    February 4, 2011 at 12:33 am

    SMW were one of the most under-rated bands from the post punk era and as such, if The Desperate Bicycles can release a full anthology, than why can’t Six Minute War release a CD too. My vinyls are a bit too crackly to rip from

  4. Chris L
    Chris L
    February 4, 2011 at 6:02 pm

    hadn’t really noticed it before but I must admit Political Asylum’s “Autonomous Youth” was a total rip off of SMWs ‘Youth Culture’.

    could never quite match the first verse in Fallout’s ‘Peter Sutcliffe’ off the ‘butchery’ 10″ –

    “thousands mobbed, they wanted him dead, some cunt stuck a Nescafe jar in his gob”

    sing it like ya say it 🙂

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