TATTOO YOU: The little bit of blood...

TATTOO YOU: The little bit of blood oozing from the tattoo on the cover of Poison’s new album “Flesh & Blood” apparently made some retail carriers a little woozy. After several expressed concern about the photo, Capitol Records agreed to do a second version sans sangre . “Basically, a lot of the mass merchandisers indicated that it would be in our best interest if we could lose the blood,” said Lou Mann, Capitol vice president of sales. “So we said fine, and the band said fine, if it’s that big a deal it’s OK.”

Still, most of the retailers seem to want the bloody version, so of the 1.2 million copies being sent out in the initial shipment, 750,000 are going that way. Mann noted that this is the second time Poison has shipped two different album covers. The original version of the group’s last album, the 5 million-selling “Open Up and Say . . . Ah!,” featured a cat-like woman sticking out a prodigious tongue. The second version showed only her eyes.