From sea to shining sea, wherever there are rock ’n’ roll types who want their hair to be noticed, there are wigs designed by Sture Osten. Tish and Snookie Bellomo, who once sang with Blondie, and then with the Sic F*cks, and who later opened Manic Panic, New York, New York’s original punk boutique, and who claim to change the color of their hair more often than their underwear, typically do so with the help of wigs designed by Sture Osten. I’m not making any of this up. For instance, to be photographed recently with two members of the Pop Tarts, whoever they are, both the sisters Bellomo donned Osten’s silver glitter and platinum Tina II (suggested retail: $44.00), named—you guessed it— after every wigmonger’s favorite pop singer, Ms. Tina Turner. Diane Brill, the celebrated menswear designer and galabout-town, is said to wear a Sture too. And a Sture was one of the five wigs Kate Pierson wore simultaneously while posing for the sleeve of the B-52s’ “The Girl From Ipanema Goes To Greenland” single.

On the opposite edge of the continent, two of Night Ranger were glimpsed donning Stures for a recent video shoot, and Lobsterhead Kenhart, Kathleen Turner’s stand-in during the filming of Peggy Sue Got Married, wears Sture’s spikey skunk number (suggested retail: $46.00) when she wants to make the Coors-becapped, down-vested fellows of the Northern California hamlet in which she lives exclaim, “Je-sus!”

Sture Osten wigs are made of lifelike Sturelon modacrylic fiber, manufactured exclusively for him by the Kanegafuchi Chemical Company of Japan, and assembled in Seoul by skilled native seamstresses who are presumably happy to work for much less than their American counterparts. I’m not making any of this up.

Having begun to style hair when he was barely 12 (he remembers having had to stand on tiptoe to see what he was doing!) Sture, only five short years later, became the youngest National Hairstyling Champion in Swedish history. I’m not making any of this up. He’s since been quoted in People.

Liza Edwards, the celebrated background singer and devoted spouse of a former Linda Ronstadt accompanist, reports that Dolly Parton herself, every wigmonger’s favorite pop singer, is very actively considering buying a Sture of her own, although confirmation was not yet available at presstime.

Sture Osten wigs are available at whichever department and other stores •have agreed to stock them. Ask for them by name. It rhymes with “Sir, hey\” I’m not making this up.

The randomness of stardom, as attentive readers’ll affirm without hesitation, has long been an obsession of this column—time and again I’ve marveled at the wealth and fame of Stevie Nicks, for instance, or Madonna, Ric Ocasek, Stephen Pearcy and others of similarly meager talent. Well, it’s high time that we looked at the phenomenon from the opposite perspective —that of the brilliant artist who gets nowhere.

How in the world, for instance, to explain that poor Dwight Twilley is still virtually unknown after making mostly fab records since the mid’70s? He’s a terrific singer. Indeed, only two others in recent rock, John Lennon and Bryan Ferry, have ever sighed their ways through a torch song quite as gorgeously. Indeed, it was “Losing You,” that absolute tour de force of heartbrokenness on his first album, that made this column a fan on the spot. And he’s nearly as good on the rockers. For my money, no Beatles soundalike of the past 15 years—not Emmett Rhodes, not Todd Rundgren, Badfinger, Tommy Keene or even Marshall Crenshaw—can touch him. Forgetting every bit of which, you’d have thought him a shoo-in for at least teen stardom solely on the basis of his prettiness—his chiseled good looks recall John Taylor’s and Rob Lowe’s.

And yet in the eleven and a half years since his debut, even with the patronage of such (self-) celebrated starmakers as Clive Davis, he’s had exactly two medium-sized hits, 1975’s “I’m On Fire” and 1982’s (very subpar) “Girls.” There was a time, just before sidekick Phil Seymour briefly became a bigger star than he’d ever be himself, when he was said to have too high an opinion of himself for his own good. Even so, I’d feel as confident of my ability to explain Dwight Twilley’s obscurity as I would of my ability to parachute onto an album cover from 30 stories up on a breezy day.

Elsewhere in this, or some forthcoming, ish, you’ll read of San Francisco’s Jetboy, who explain that they abandoned the up that once made them seem the most stylish young group in America because they were afraid of being perceived as caring more about their image than their music. One’s vividly reminded of what Malcolm McLaren’s said about Sigue Sigue Sputnik—something along the lines of, “They used to show up together at places looking amazing. Then they had to spoil it by forming a band.”

TURN TO PAGE 56

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26

At least on the four-song demo that their manager sends prospective interviewers, you see, Jetboy’s music is utterly without distinction—a tedious combination of fuzzedout guitars, bastardized soul-via-Paul-Rodgers vocal mannerisms, and macho posturing), all rather sloppily performed.

In this age of MIDI, we’ve become accustomed to the idea of keyboard players who don’t actually play keyboards, but instead just flick an occasional switch. Well, I suggest that it’s high time that we got used to the idea of rock ’n’ roll stars who don’t actually write, sing, or perform rock ’n’ roll, but instead just grant the occasional interview and pose for the occasional photographer.

Consider how much better a world this would be if the likes of Jetboy and Sigue Sigue Sputnik, both of whom have lots of interesting and original ideas about how to put a look together, but not a glimmer of a clue as to how to make distinctive music, were freed of the latter worry. Consider how much better a world this would be if someone like Jon Bon Jovi didn’t feel compelled to try to write songs and sing, but instead were content simply to display his adorable features.

Consider how much better a magazine this would be if I didn’t feel compelled to ramble on and on on and on and on on and on for nearly 2000 words every month, but instead left more space for Toby, Billy, Karen, Richard, Richard, Greil, Dave, Bubba, Iman, Sylvie and Roy to do their inimitable things in.

Consider it done.