Blue Ribbons/The Powhida Infirmary at Lizard Lounge – Cambridge, MA

$15/$20

Doors 7

“The Blue Ribbons’ latest album, 2024’s “Forever, But Not For Long,” has plenty of pop hooks. Or rather, it had plenty of them before the band took sledgehammers and scalpels to most of the pretty bits.

“It took a while to get the bones of some of the tunes down just so we could break them,” bandleader James Rohr told Herald with a laugh.

Local champs the Blue Ribbons are a pop band in the same way that the Beatles or Steely Dan or Television are pop bands in that they like pop but “aren’t too precious about the songs,” Rohr said.

Jed Gottleib – Boston Herald

The Blue Ribbons

John Powhida’s newest rock send-up The Powhida Infirmary includes fellow inpatients Mike Gent (The Figgs, Graham Parker) on drums, Rick Cohen (Brian Wilson Band) on keys, and John Sheeran (Township, Nat Freedberg) on bass. A fixture of Boston music since 2000, Powhida is the erstwhile frontman for the beloved Rudds and the one-time pilot of the John Powhida Airport International. The Albany native has garnered several Boston Music Awards, won the WBCN Rock ‘n Roll Rumble in 2011, and has performed with Graham Parker, Peter Wolf, Todd Rundgren, and the Nazz. The Infirmary is working on their forthcoming debut—due in the summer of 2026, it’s a bit of an art-rock fever dream, a little injection of disco-pop, and anything but prescriptive. Whatever ails you, the Infirmary will cure.

Powhida Infirmary