Five years after a local rock hero tragically died in a road accident, friends, musicians and a movie-maker will pay him tribute in a memorial concert.
Victor Tsoy, mainstay of the hugely popular St Petersburg band Kino, died in a car crash on August 15, 1990.
During the last five years several Tsoy memorials have been held, the most massive being a stadium tribute to the musician at the Sports Concert Complex in 1990, organized in accordance with Russian Orthodox custom on the 40th day from his death.
The forthcoming night's program will include the film "Last Hero" directed by Alexei Uchitel, which still remains unknown to the wide public. The fragments of Uchitel's other film, "Rock", featuring Tsoy and Kino will be shown as well. To make the night's film program complete, some fragments from Sergei Solovyov's "ASSA" and Rashid Nugmanov's "Igla," two films which brought Tsoy national fame, will be screened.
Teenagers who continually disturb fellpw-citizens by singing Tsoy's songs in doorways, as well as the appearance of bands who try to imitate Kino, are indicative of the wide posthumous popularity of the band and their leader -- something no other formerly underground Russian band has ever enjoyed.
All these events have been organized by Yuri Belishkin, Kino's former manager who now works with the band DDT. He says he tries to create a special atmosphere of warmth and -- of many acts wishing to take part -- chooses musicians who were either personal friends of Tsoy's, or similar to him in mood.
Musicians to take part in Tsoy's Memorial Night on Tuesday, August 15, will include, most importantly, Alexei Rybin, who was part of Kino when the band was still an obscure acoustic duo formed somewhere on the city's outskirts in 1981. After Tsoy's demise he published a insightful book of memoirs called "Kino From the Very Beginning."
Alexei Vishnya, producer of the few albums recorded by Kino and a rather bizarre performer in his own right, will join the event's line-up.
Also taking part are Petlya Nesterova (Air Loop), the pop-funk band whose leader, Edik Nesterenko, used to mix with the members of Kino, and whose tapes were likewise produced by Vishnya.
In 1992 Belishkin organized a general competition of bands playing Kino's songs or writing their own material in a similar vein. The winners were the band Kamchatka, named after the nickname of the boiler-room where Tsoy used to work in the days when Kino was totally underground. Kamchatka is going to take part in the forthcoming memorial as well.
But Belishkin's latest discovery comes from the city of Osh, Kirgizstan. The band, called simply "Victor", perform their own material as well as Tsoy's classics.
