PAGING TIPPER GORE: You won’t be seeing...

PAGING TIPPER GORE: You won’t be seeing popster John Brannen’s new CD single, “Primitive Emotion,” in any record stores next week. It’s a limited-edition promotional item that’s going out to about 2,000 radio programmers and industry execs. And with good reason--the CD cover illustrates the “primitive” aspect of the song title all too well. It features a nature photo (we’ll put this delicately) of two African giraffes engaged in a spirited bout of love-making. According to Burt Stein, head of Apache Records (a custom label distributed by Capitol Records), the gimmick paid off. “We view ourselves as a fresh, innovative label and we wanted to show the industry that we’re not afraid to (groan) stick our necks out for an artist. For a label as small as we are, you have to do something special to get radio’s attention.” Stein acknowledged that he was initially concerned about the reaction of female radio programmers, but said that no one--so far--has checked in with complaints. “In fact, (KMPC-FM program director) Sam Bellamy liked it so much that she asked us what we’re going to do for an encore.”