Pretty sad week for the nostalgic Toronto music scene.

The legendary El Macombo (or "Elmo") has closed its doors. The building was bought out and will not be continuing with booking live acts. Famous for many cutting edge bands that played the venue at the beginning of their careers. It was a fairly small place. Well covered events were: The Rolling Stones with Margaret Trudeau in the audience, Elvis Costello, U2 and Squeeze to name merely a few. Very sad.

Sam The Record Man is also closing. Absolutely the cheapest and best selection of CDs downtown (and just around the corner from my office - arrrggghhh). Very angry about this. We will be left with the HMV only and prices are almost guarantteed to be going up there now.

I need to go home and weep. :(

I was there in the late 80's early 90's, I thought it was pretty well on it's last legs back then, I liked looking at all the pictures of the artists who played there over the years and the beer was dirt cheap. I even have April Wine's Live at the El Macombo on vinyl.

Sam's closing?, I thought that big sign on Yonge Street was a landmark or something... bogie you work around there, you never told me you were a squeegee kid (just kidding )

Good one Cal. LOL :D :D

Yep, the giant red wheel is a four minute walk from here and it will be gone fairly soon. They are keeping that store open for a while to get rid of inventory. Seems that Sid's son wasted away all the money on e-business solutions that completely failed. It was as much a landmark as the Elmo was.

I couldn't believe my ears the other day when I heard that about Sams. I bought my first CD from that store on young street close to the Eaton Centre.

The record stores are most likely not going to make it. I still love going and flipping through to get a look at the sleeves and now that is gone.

My friend used to go there all the time when he was living in Toronto, he's going to be really upset to hear this. I think he saw the Stones there or another big band doing a more intimate club scene. This is the place where bands will just show up and do a gig for nostalgia's sake right?

Yeah, some of them would come back once in a while.

I was watching the news last night and they showed the new owner's crew taking down the big neon palm tree and marquee from the Elmo. The marquee was too heavy and it fell on one of them. Knocked him out cold. Ominous?