sschlich2026-10-02T00:28:32-07:00

Recording Things That Go Bump in the Night

…a slice of the band’s history…

Two trumpets, a trombone, a sousaphone…and a 12-string guitar. Plus other instruments, now and then. Most of us met in the South Portland High School marching band, and we were fans of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. We formed a band of our own and played Tijuana Brass songs—The Lonely Bull, A Taste of Honey. We had fun taping ourselves on a reel-to-reel recorder at our trombone player’s house. In 1968, my junior year of high school, we actually made a record—a 45, a single—and got it played on the radio. This is the story of how that came to be…

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Our band’s very first performance was for a talent show the year before, 1967. We were worried that people would laugh at us, so we dressed up in silly costumes and called ourselves Jason and the ArgoNuts. That’s right, the ArgoNUTS. That earned the laughs that we were now seeking, and we turned out to be pretty good.

We recorded some songs that I wrote for us, that were nothing like the Tijuana Brass. I played one for a pro musician who lived down the street from me, and he agreed to help us make a record.

Here’s a taste… <Play a 25-second excerpt from Things That Go Bump in the Night>

That song is Things That Go Bump in the Night. The title comes from an old Scottish saying by Robert Burns: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, and other things that go bump in the night, dear lord deliver us.”

My musician friend somehow raised $1000 to pay for the recording studio and copies of the record. He got the money from the actor Gary Merrill. Who? Bette Davis’ former husband. We were in business! Jason and the ArgoNuts recorded Things That Go Bump in the Night and for the flip side, Love Me Always.

It was an intense three hours in that studio, recording at least a dozen takes of Things That Go Bump in the Night. I think we did Love Me Always in a single take! The record itself was two different takes of Things spliced together. I used to know the exact location of that splice.

So what comes next? The record got made…but how to distribute it? When was I going to hear it on the radio? Nobody could tell me. After weeks and weeks of waiting, finally! Some records arrived ready for distribution.

B-b-but stores wouldn’t stock the record until it got played on the radio. And the radio wouldn’t play it until… <sigh> Picture this: Four teenagers crammed into a red VW bug cruising the Portland, Maine, radio stations. We struck out everywhere. We tried to meet the disc jockeys but we couldn’t get past the front desk. Finally, one DJ took pity on us and, in his studio between records, allowed us to pitch to him.

Now—imagine if you will, what a man who plays hits by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles is going to do with Things That Go Bump in the Night by Jason and the ArgoNuts.

To be nice, that man meets with these…kids…who give him a record of a hollow-sounding trumpet and a guitar. He tries to explain payola…that’s the practice of record companies paying disc jockeys cash under the table to play their records.

He doesn’t explain it in plain black and white, but we get it. We don’t have any money. We’re teenagers! And all he can offer us—is a shrug. But he keeps the record, so there’s hope.

Now what’s left? My parents loved to tell…and retell…about hearing their 16-year old son on the phone—loudly, urgently, telling the guy at the other end “You’ve got to do more, Gary!” and then finding out that it was actor Gary Merrill, you know, that guy famous for being Bette Davis’s ex. And now perhaps infamous for being the benefactor of Jason and the ArgoNuts.

Gary did not do more. We sold a few records and one day I actually heard Love Me Always played on the air. My mother bought a dozen copies of the single. Stardom had fluttered at us briefly, then drifted away like a butterfly in the wind.

Nothing more happened with the record—or with the band. We played a few gigs, but eventully all graduated…in more ways than one. And it’s just history now, enshrined on my website.

But the experience did do something quite valuable for me. The mention of it years later on a job application won me an interview, followed by a job, and my 35-year career as a technical writer.

* * *

You get less bold as you age. You slowly acquire things that you can lose, and you protect those things with an abundance of adult caution. How absolutely glorious was the courage that led me and my buddies to get up on that stage, and the naiveté to step into a recording studio aspiring to be rock stars.

No matter how fantastic, how absurd, that goal may have been…we did accomplish something remarkable. We made a record…a thing that wasn’t doable by teenagers in backwater Maine.

We did it! And we succeeded because—try as they might—nobody convinced us that we couldn’t.

sschlich2026-10-01T22:59:28-07:00

Jason & the ArgoNuts

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Jason & the ArgoNuts

Pages: The Band | The Record | The Story | MP3s

Clockwise from left: Allen Heald, Bass; Eric Jurgenson, Trombone; Steve Schlich, Trumpet;
Jim Miles, Drums; Mark Mercier, Keyboards; Laurie Chevalier, Guitar; Ross Bertran, Trumpet.

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February 1967debut at South Portland High School Talent Show

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1967at a party in South Portland, Maine

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1968at a party in South Portland, Maine

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Now called just ‘JASON’

November 1968

at The Gate Coffee House in Portland, Maine

Left to right:Gary Armstrong
Allen Heald
Steve Schlich
Laurie Chevalier
Ross Bertran
Peter Allen More photos