But Tsoi soon rises and walks out of the room without a word, unable to bear the moldy old woman behind the desk, as she reads out a long and tedious list of the job’s required work experience and certifications (such as demands that his performance include “measures to raise the ideological, theoretical, and professional level” of his audience).
Nevertheless, the director of “Assa,” Sergey Solovyov, clearly injected the scene with a distinct, social-protest meaning that’s still palpable today: appearing as himself, Tsoi is led by Vitya (the “negro” character played by Dmitry Shumilov in black face) to an interview for a music gig at a restaurant. At least that’s what he indicated in a television interview in September 1988 with Sergey Sholokhov, when Tsoi said he refuses to consider “I Want Changes!” a protest song, likening his cameo in the Soviet crime film “Assa” (where he performs the song) to “something tacked on.” The band’s drummer, Georgy Guryanov, said more than once that the song isn’t about political changes, but inner, deeper things more like creative changes and a sense of freedom. in the context of the era, it could only have been read one way: we were waiting for changes in society and in our lives,” Alexander Zhitinsky, one of the jury members wrote, 20 odd years later.īut Tsoi apparently had something else entirely in mind when he wrote the song.
“Whatever Vitya said later and whatever the social content, the song ‘I Want Changes!’. In the last days of May 1986, at the fourth Leningrad Rock Club Festival at the Nevsky Cultural Center, Viktor Tsoi and his band Kino first performed a collection of songs that would become pillars of Russian rock music and required learning for any Russian teenager with a guitar: “From Now On, It's Our Turn,” “Close the Door Behind Me, I'm Leaving,” and “I Want Changes!” This last song made the festival’s final jury shortlist, along with songs from the album “ Illusions” by Zoopark and “ Love Is All We’ve Got” by Aquarium.
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