Demand Up for Grammy Tickets--Price, Too : Pop Music: Local brokers are selling the precious ducats at a premium. NARAS representatives promise a crackdown.

Need a hot date idea for today? How about the star-studded Grammy Awards show?

Tickets are available . . . if you’re willing to pay.

Several Los Angeles ticket brokers are offering Grammy seats at prices ranging from $350 to $1,000. Face values on the tickets are $200, $400 and $600, with the two highest brackets including admittance to the gala post-Grammy bash at the Biltmore Hotel--privileges that are meant to be reserved for members and guests of the Grammy-sponsoring National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

Where do the brokers get the tickets?

“My perception is the people selling them to us appear to be NARAS members whose primary concern is being able to pay the rent rather than going to the event,” said Brian Harlig, co-owner of Hollywood-based Good Time Tickets. Harlig predicted that he would sell only a couple dozen Grammy tickets “because of the difficulty obtaining them.”

Harlig said that his firm has bought and sold Grammy tickets the last 10 times the Grammys have been held in Los Angeles, and noted that demand has increased each year. This year, he said, it approaches the interest level of the Oscars--to which he will also be offering tickets in about the same price range.

Not surprisingly, NARAS is not thrilled with the commerce.

“It’s supply and demand,” acknowledged NARAS president Mike Greene, noting that the interest in the ceremony has outgrown the 6,000-seat Shrine Auditorium. Greene said that he is exploring possibilities of larger settings for the future.

Meanwhile, he admits that there’s nothing he can do about the brokers and the people who buy tickets from them--it’s all legal, despite the warning printed on the tickets that they are non-transferable.

But for the first time this year, NARAS is cracking down on the people who sell the tickets to the brokers.

Said Greene: “We hadn’t told anybody, but we’re printing the names of the people on the tickets and cross-referencing it with the seat numbers. We’ll know who the people are who have sold the tickets, and if they’re academy members, they’re in a lot of trouble.”