U.N.I (1991 & 1999-2001)

In 1991, Sue Baim and I formed the duo U.N.I.  Being members of The Fault that had broken up just a few months earlier while prepping to record its first CD, we decided to continue the recording project as best we could.  Between us two, we had written enough songs to fill a CD and most of them had already been pre-produced by Paul Hyde and The Fault for The Fault’s CD.  But without a band, Sue and I envisioned ourselves as being similar to the Eurythmics – Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart.  We called upon our musician and non-musician friends to help us.  And help they did.  Robyn Durling and Lefty Charania of Poolwest let us use their studio and label; and their engineer Chris von Hellerman engineered the album; Paul Hyde co-produced and shared lead vocals on my song Winless Game; former Fault bandmate Rob Marr played bass; and too many other friends to name here played instruments and/or sang BGs.  It was a fun experience.  And it was a good album – which we called “Push Me – Pull You”, after the two-headed llama in the movie “Dr. Dolittle”. 

After we completed the cassette album, Poolwest promoted it to all the major labels of the day, using the slogan, “In a world gone mad, there’s always U.N.I” but none picked it up, unfortunately.  And Sue and I just sort of let the project drop away.  We never played live as U.N.I, at least then. 

Nearly ten years later, in 1999, Sue and I re-UNIted in Victoria, BC, when Sue asked me to direct the music for a musical theatre project that she had envisioned.  It was about the intertwined lives of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.  Sue portrayed Liza.  It was after the completion of that project that Sue and I realized that we had just added a lot of show-tunes to our repertoire and we asked each other, ‘why don’t we resurrect U.N.I?’  So, we did. 

Sue and I performed as the duo U.N.I in bars, clubs, public squares, and retirement centres and care facilities around Victoria.  One particularly fun gig was when we brought in the new millennium at Hugo’s night club, as Liza Millenni and her piano-man. 

In 2001, we again took an indefinite break from that project. 

In 2014, I had our album Push Me – Pull You mastered, by Evan Rabby of CompanyZero, and released on CD, on the Poolwest label (thanks for that, Robyn and Lefty).