POP MUSIC / THOMAS K. ARNOLD : Chances for McCarty’s Scalping Measure Recede

San Diego concert fans, tired of getting ripped off by ticket scalpers, have found a friend on the City Council and a foe in a local state senator.

Councilwoman Judy McCarty recently drafted a statewide anti-scalping measure that would make it illegal for anyone to resell tickets to a public event for more than 50% above face value and limit each seller to eight marked-up tickets per event.

“As public servants, we should be looking for ways to benefit the citizens in general, instead of a few ticket brokers who are getting rich at this thing by taking advantage of the people,” McCarty said.

With the full council’s blessing, McCarty’s bill was sent to state Sen. Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), who McCarty hoped would carry it through the Legislature. No such luck.

“The sad thing is, Larry is already carrying 70 bills this year, and he essentially told me, ‘Lady, unless you can be up here every 30 minutes to help push this thing through, I can’t help you,’ ” McCarty said. “So obviously this isn’t a priority for him. And that’s unfortunate, because scalping has really gotten out of hand.”

It certainly has. Shortly after Stirling’s refusal to declare war on ticket scalpers, it was announced that pop singer Neil Diamond’s April 17 concert at the San Diego Sports Arena had sold out less than three hours after the box office opened. Two days later, Trip Tickets, San Diego’s leading ticket “brokerage,” was charging $249 for front-row seats, $199 for seats in Row 7 and a mere $149 for seats in Row 12. The original ticket price, by the way, was $22.50.

If McCarty’s 50% maximum markup were in effect, tickets could not be resold for more than $33.75 each.

For a long time, R.E.M.--appearing Thursday night at the Sports Arena--was loved by the critics but merely liked by the public. The Athens, Ga.-based rock group’s debut album, “Murmur,” was voted Album of the Year in Rolling Stone magazine’s 1983 Critics’ Poll, but barely cracked the Top 40 on the national LP charts.

Subsequent albums like “Reckoning” (1984), “Fables of the Reconstruction” (1985) and “Life’s Rich Pageant” (1986) met with similar fates: the reviews were great, the sales so-so.

R.E.M.’s commercial fortune, however, soared with the 1987 release of “Document.” The album shot up the charts, eventually attaining platinum status for sales in excess of a million units, and spawned the group’s first-ever Top 10 single, “The One I Love.”

While “Document” opened the door to superstardom, it was the follow-up LP, “Green,” that enabled R.E.M. to cross the threshold. Three months after its release, the album has already sold more copies than all previous ones combined, and given R.E.M. two more hit singles, “Orange Crush” and “Stand.”

The group’s success on the concert trail has mushroomed accordingly. R.E.M.’s Sports Arena show is only a few tickets short of a sellout--a feat that just a year ago would have been virtually impossible.

Amazing? Yes. Surprising? Not really. R.E.M.’s trademark sound, after all, is influenced heavily by the sounds of two of the most important American rock bands of all time: the guitar-heavy, electric folk-rock of the Byrds and the intense, manic-depressive broodings of the Velvet Underground.

Both of those bands’ critical acclaim far surpassed their commercial success. Fortunately, such is no longer the case with R.E.M.

LINER NOTES: Last month, the San Diego pop scene lost one of its most eligible bachelors when manic talkin’ blues man Mojo Nixon and his longtime sweetheart, Adaire Newman, tied the knot at the Go Kart Ride race track in south San Diego. On April 1, another local pop celebrity will bid adieu to bachelorhood: Chris Sullivan, bassist with the Jacks and a former member of the pioneering San Diego punk-rock group the Penetrators, will marry Marisa Edwards at the Mt. Helix Amphitheater in La Mesa. A reception at Rio’s nightclub in Loma Portal will follow; providing entertainment will be hot local up-and-comers the Forbidden Pigs.

Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians will be at Symphony Hall on May 24, three months after they were originally scheduled to play the downtown venue. In February, the folk-rock upstarts postponed the entire West Coast leg of their current world tour, including their Feb. 21 San Diego date, to allow for an extension of their swing through Europe. . . . With their fourth album, “Poor and Famous,” in the can and about to be released by MCA/Curb Records, local roots-rock champions the Beat Farmers are getting ready to once again hit the road. But first, a pair of warm-up dates, this Friday and Saturday, at the Bacchanal nightclub in Kearny Mesa.

Tickets go on sale Saturday for concerts by Bunny Wailer, April 15 at San Diego State University’s Open Air Theater, and ex-Soft Cell singer Marc Almond, April 23 at the California Theatre. On Monday, tickets go on sale for Bad Company and Vixen’s April 13 show at the California.