Peter Urlich

Peter Urlich (born 1956 in Auckland) is a New Zealand musician. He is one of the few New Zealand musicians who has performed both rock and dance music.

Urlich was educated at Sacred Heart College in the suburb of Glen Innes, Auckland.

At school in the early 1970s he was in a band called Chillum with his school friend, Ian Morris, and Glendowie College boys Andrew Bayliss, Glenn Owen and Bruce Murdoch. They played local parties, tennis clubs, rugby clubs and school dances.

When Chillum folded in 1975, he and Dobbyn formed Th' Dudes with Ian Morris. After Th' Dudes split in 1980, Urlich headed off to the UK where he was fascinated by the rise of club culture. Returning to New Zealand in 1981, he approached writer Mark Phillips and they opened their first club in a run down bar in Auckland's Albert Street. A Certain Bar was an immediate success and over the next decade, he and Phillips ran a succession of successful clubs. These were hugely influential in establishing a contemporary club scene in Auckland.

In 1986 Urlich and Phillips were partners in Stimulant Records with Simon Grigg. The label released the album Eight Arms to Hold You, the first New Zealand club music collection.

In the 1990s Urlich returned to performing and had residencies in Auckland as the vocalist with The Lawrence Quintet. In 1995 he began a Saturday morning radio show on 95bFm. His initial partner was DJ Phil Clark, however he was replaced in 1996 by Bevan Keys and the show, Nice'n'Urlich, with its mix of Urlich's chat and Key's soulful house music selection, became a hit. Taking the show to clubs also proved hugely popular and for the next decade Nice'n'Urlich sold out increasingly larger venues. In 1999 the duo were signed to Simon Grigg's Huh Records. The three Nice'n'Urlich albums sold over 60,000 albums in New Zealand.

In 1999 Urlich co-starred in a New Zealand reality show, Popstars (arguably the inspiration for the worldwide Idol phenomenon), which was a hunt for people to form a pop band, and to perform and produce an album (the winners formed a band named TrueBliss). His role in the show was that of manager.

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