Animal instincts

The new House of Blues has a number of great concerts coming up, including a highly anticipated appearance by Animal Collective May 14. And if this week's New York shows are any indication, tickets to the Boston performance will be in great demand.

According to a trusty New York correspondent, Animal Collective fans in New York have been clawing themselves apart in search of tickets. The first show was last night, at the Grand Ballroom (check out pix at www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2009/01/animal_collecti_14.html), and the second show is tonight, at the Bowery Ballroom; both sold out almost immediately. The demand for tickets is fevered: on craiglist.org, tickets were going for up to $150 – some seven times the face value. (On bigger corporate sites, scalpers were unloading tix at considerably higher prices.) All this for a band that stressed on its most recent album, "Merriweather Post Pavillion," the need to look past "material things."

You can avoid those crazy resell prices by buying tickets to the Boston Animal Collective show ($20, plus hefty fees, of course) when they go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. Tickets are available at www.livenation.com, www.hob.com/boston and at all Ticketmaster ticket centers, online at www.ticketmaster.com or by phone 800-745-3000.

Jan. 20 show at the Grand Ballroom. Photo by Zach Dilgard