Push The Feeling On

I saw the video for this song recently, a song that was pretty inescapable in March 1995. It's not a song I was a massive fan of but I didn't dislike it either- you heard it so often you didn't need to buy it or go looking for it, it was everywhere. It pushed a few buttons sitting in front of the TV one night last week. Push The Feeling On was by Nightcrawlers, a Scottish group led by producer/ DJ/ singer John Reid. The song originally came out in 1992 in a disco/ Acid Jazz style but didn't cause too much of a fuss. When it was later remixed by MK (Marc Kinchen) in a house style it became a big hit, working its way from clubs to charts all over Europe and eventually got to number three in the UK charts at a time when that meant selling tens of thousands of records/ CDs/ tapes. The MK version was so successful that Nightcrawlers decided to make it the lead version and they switched to become a house act, actually deleting the original version from their back catalogue.

The song is a low key, subtle, deep house affair, a stripped back sound with hi hats, a bleepy organ part, an insistent, bouncing rhythm with two affecting vocal hooks. In a way though, although I instantly recalled the song and its effect on me thirty years later was instant, it wasn't the song as much as the video that struck me. The video, with singer John Reid lip-syncing his vocals straight into the camera while a variety of 20- 30 somethings bouncing around, is pure 1995. People in clubs in the north west of England in 1995 looked like this- short haired girls, long haired men, leather and satin, dyed hair, afros, chokers, hats, 70s shorts with knee socks, the two types of dresses being worn. Admittedly the cast in the video are a glamourous and attractive bunch but the look and the dancing is what the clientele of certain bars and clubs looked like, the crowd at Paradise in Manchester for instance or Nation in Liverpool. It struck me quite deeply that the mid 90s have a look just as noticeable as the mid 80s or mid 60s do. 

A reader at Youtube has left this comment- 'We don't search for old songs, we search for old memories. Nostalgia is a very powerful thing'.