St Petersburg's club scene is only three years old and liable to frequent changes. Roksi, Osoaviakhim, Sterkh are gone and forgotten, Gora and Rock Club are temporarily out of business, but in the last couple of months the empty places were filled by at least three new venues.

A club, which was to be launched last Sunday with a comeback concert by the obsolete rock band Nate!, whose members once described their style as "sex'n'roll," has found a premises on the site of the Spartak movie theater. Back in the 1980s Spartak drew crowds of intellectuals from all over the city because it showed films which couldn't be seen anywhere else.

Belonging to the State Film Foundation, the film theater was the only place around where one could, occasionally, see a film directed by Fassbinder or retrospectives of Antonioni.

And now it is going to attract wild hordes of rock fans. Sergei Vasilyev, the manager of the new Spartak Club argues that rock concerts will not contradict the theater's reputation.

"I think cinema is a kind of rock'n'roll," he says. "This place schooled cultured people to come here to watch movies. Now the majority of them are similar cultured young people, who also like rock'n'roll."

Combining his new job with his task as manager of rock band Auktsion, Vasilyev, 29, knows how hard it is for a local musician to make his living just on the strength on his music. This could explain the main idea of the new venue -- to give musicians a chance to earn money by performing.

He also plans to promote new talents, who would support "name" acts such as Televizor or Auktsion, booked by the club for February. The first name he mentioned is rhythm-and-blues four-piece Chufella Marzufella. Whereas Spartak plans to fill its 500-seat hall with the help of old reputable groups, the Rotterdam Club, which opened on January 21, has yet to define its policies. One of its two program managers Taras Dyakon, 25, who is also a member of two obscure groups Vostok 6 and Blues Company, says the club is open to any styles, but puts the stress on danceable live music, be it 1950s-style rock'n'roll or reggae.

Located on the city's outskirts, the club occupies the second floor of a typical Brezhnev-style food store. It looks like the only place in St Petersburg's south-west, where one can listen to live rock music.

The CD Club has existed in semi-secrecy since December but last week stepped out of the closet and into the limelight for the three-night "Rocking for Harvest'95" festival. The club's program manager Vadim Tverdyukov, 26, who is an ardent follower of jazz rock and other complex sounds, is absolutely convinced about the importance of quality.

"In our club we want musicians to sound as good as on CD," he says, explaining the choice of the name. To be fair the place tries as hard as it can to reach that goal but as he says "Unfortunately, local musicians got accustomed to playing on just about any old equipment, for instance, plugging a telephone cord instead a guitar cable, and when we lent them professional cables, they were shocked how drastically the sound quality improved."

The club, which opens on Saturday's and Sunday's from midnight and closes at six in the morning, occupies the second floor foyer of the Okhta movie theater and can hold about 80 people.

"Another main idea was to show that rock music shows don't have to be as dirty as we usually have here." Tverdyukov says, "It is not necessarily a heap of empty bottles and a crowd of crazed people running from one wall to another."