Boogie Shuffle

It's becoming something of a ritual at the Hopkins Center: The Hop announces the scheduling of a rock concert, tickets for the show are printed up, and a special student ticket sale is scheduled for an early weekday morning. Then hundreds of eager students arrive to buy tickets on the designated sale day, only to find a hastily written sign reading "Appearance Cancelled" spread over the posters advertising the show.

Such was the case last month, when a rock group named Tower of Power cancelled its Princeton weekend engagement a day before ticket sales were to begin. In this instance the College was lucky; it lost only $1,000 as a result of the cancellation. Contracts have been broken only a day or so before a concert, with bogus medical ailments used as an excuse. During the last year, ten performers or groups have reneged on agreements with the Hopkins Center, all of them in the pop or rock music field.

John Goyette '60, business manager of the Hopkins Center, blames the wave of cancellations on what he calls the arrogance of rock performers. Rock groups, he explains, are in such great demand that they can — and do — hold up offers to perform as leverage in trying to obtain better offers. "They have a monopoly of talent," he laments. "They exploit their monopoly at the cost of the public. ..."