ssmweb.net...because you CAN TOO go home again ... 

About a decade ago Jeff Collins '72 started collecting the e-mail addresses of Shattuck & St. Mary's alumni and before long there was a continuous string of inane banter going back and forth across the Internet between people who knew each other back in the day but who, for the most part, had not laid eyes on each other since we "trod the paths together" so long ago.   Most were from classes in the '70s, though over the years we have connected with many other generations of Shads and Saints.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, we discovered that some of us were, or are, musicians.  With that came the usual braggadocio and numerous idle suggestions that "we ought to get together and jam sometime."  Owing to the fact Mike '72 and Kathy Clark have a complete music studio in their Houston home, they decided to have these braggarts put their money where their mouths had been, and in September 2004, the first ReHouston was held. 

Of course we couldn't limit the gathering to just the members of the band.  All musicians need groupies fawning over them, so we opened up the invitation to any and all alumni who cared to join us.  This web site was created in part to promote that first gathering.  We named the band "The Core," short for those of us who still considered ourselves to be the same HARDCORE partiers we were back in the day, and who were brave enough to commit to coming and playing at the first gathering no matter what the outcome.

We have held a ReHouston every September since, and between various musicians and groupies, we have had the pleasure of entertaining and reacquainting ourselves with many old friends. 

Every year the band has gotten a little better, playing the music we loved from back in the day, when Rock and Blues and Motown music were king, and everything in contemporary music was new and exciting.  There has not been a time since when popular music so reflected the sometimes-painful changes that our society was experiencing, and for many of us who came of age in the fifties, sixties and seventies, hearing the old tunes again creates a magic which transcends nostalgia.

Turn your speakers on and click HERE for a five-minute-thirty-second montage of The Core's music, which was recorded live at ReHouston 2007.

Then one dark and stormy evening guitarist Mike Clark '72 awoke in a cold sweat and sat bolt-upright in bed.  He had just experienced a chilling nightmare in which Head of School Nick Stoneman had asked him if he could get The Core to play at the Sesquicentennial celebration, and in a fit overwrought pride, he had said YES.

As we now know, that was no nightmare.  Sometimes reality is more scary, and this is one of those times.  The thought of having to play professionally for hundreds of alumni was so disturbing that Clark immediately misinterpreted the mission as a search for the SASQUATCHcentennial.  The band was hastily assembled and undertook the mission, only to meet last winter with disastrous results at the very gates of the school.  The monster attacked and ransacked the band's equipment, then quickly retreated to a two-bedroom condo located on the very spot where Harry O'Connor's house used to sit.  Be thankful you weren't there, because it wasn't pretty:

The intrepid members of The Core were undaunted in their quest.  The elusive Sasquatch remained at large but in the process of researching the creature's origins, the band members discovered something of their own heritage: each of them had, in alarming fact, had an ancestor who was instrumental in constructing the very centerpiece of the campus!

By the spring of 2007 The Core was forced to abandon the search to attend to other matters, and the Sasquatch has yet to be found.  However, in September 2007, the band gathered once again for its fourth annual ReHouston, this time working hard to prepare three hours of live music from the sixties and seventies to present at Rendezvous on the evening of June 6, 2008.  It between rehearsals we took a little break for a family portrait:

So all we can say is,

WATCH OUT FOR THAT DAMN SASQUATCH!