My good friend Ruby Dice has been called the “Queen of the Denim Disco”; a fitting moniker. Ruby dice plays the bass, sings, and writes. She is both a confident bandleader and a much sought after bandmate; she can do it all. You could classify her sound as blues, soul, pop, country, or even disco. All of that’s in there. It’s all of the above and none of the above; Ruby does her own thing. In addition to her own solo project, she’s a rotating band member and in-demand bass player all over Texas, with Jordan Matthew Young, Johnathan Terrell, The Reverent Few, Calloway Ritch, the Grace Pettis Band, and about a billion other projects.

As In the Pocket Magazine says, Ruby’s unique “mix of soul and rock n' roll” is a vibe that “fits just fine here in the heart of Texas.” Her “soulful vocals,” combined with Calloway Ritch’s “articulate but bluesy guitar” “make for a sparse, powerful combo.” Take a listen to her latest EP, “Denim Disco,” to judge for yourself. I guarantee you’ll want to join in on the Ruby Dice party.

We review Star Trek (the Original Series), Season 1, Episode 16, “The Galileo Seven." Topics include: younger versus older crowds and how the pandemic has affected turnout, from the family hardware store in Colorado to the music scene in Austin, that Austin sound and mindset (as opposed to Nashville), growing up as a preacher’s daughter in a family band, spending one’s formative years watching Jane Goodall documentaries and Star Trek, observing bandleaders as the bass player, how Ruby met a man with two first names and how that man became her partner in crime (in music and life), the story behind “Yellow T-Shirt,” 10,000 red dice and the custom shoes to match, quasars, the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or the one, the magically reappearing Galileo shuttlecraft, Lieutenant Boma, Don Marshall, Gene Roddenberry and race in “The Galileo Seven,” black men playing heroic main characters with complexity who don’t get killed off in the first ten minutes of the episode (a rarity in the 1960s), Don Marshall in Land of the Giants, snarky Spock and sassy McCoy, nobody likes Spock being in charge, utilitarianism, the Trolley Car problem, how do we assign value to human life?, essential vs non-essential, Covid as a magnifying glass, exposing the problems with the way our society prioritizes some lives over others, Spock’s utilitarianism vs. Kodos’ utilitarianism in “Conscience of the King,” old abandoned mining towns, bad snow years and cannibalism, how TV conditions us to care about some characters more than others, how Kirk manages to keep his cool, why they shouldn’t have stopped to look at the dumb quasar, 99 problems but a ditch ain’t one because they obviously teach speed burying at Starfleet, Lucile Ball, her important role in Trek history, and her film, Five Came Back, and the beautiful way that Spock never allows other people to dictate his energy.