KISS as a human interest story: Watch a 1977 clip of KISS being interviewed without make-up on local Detroit news

The A.V. Club favorites The Sklar Brothers recently sent out the first newsletter from their spiffy new website supersklars.com. Along with relevant information about the prolific pair’s endeavors the newsletter includes some hilarious links to videos the brothers have discussed on Sklarbro Country.

Our favorite is a wonderful 1977 Detroit local news segment from “Super Max Kinkel” about a kooky new musical phenomenon sweeping the nation: four strange men in make-up who call themselves KISS. The piece begins, amusingly enough, with a completely pointless digression establishing Detroit’s bona fides as a music Mecca before teasing “a new breed of rock and roll called KISS,” a group Kinkel compares to Detroit’s own Bob Seger for its “start-to-finish high energy rock and roll” even if, unlike Seger, KISS “employs the extreme in theatrics onstage.”

Ah, but it’s all just an elaborate prelude to an exceedingly strange chat where Kinkel lobs softball questions (“How far is KISS going?”) at KISS, whose faces are never shown even as their answers expose the innermost workings of their souls, man. The highlight of the interview is Kinkel gushing to Criss about his vocals on “one just beautiful song” that goes against the group’s prevailing “high energy rock and roll” aesthetic: the quivering ballad “Beth.” It’s the most brilliant local news parody Tim & Eric never made but probably should have.