It’s the last call at The Cadillac Lounge, the latest loss of a Toronto music venue to the city.In the 19 years since he launched it, entrepreneur Sam Grosso has booked such high-profile acts as Canadian icons Gordon Lightfoot and Burton Cummings, Toronto’s Blue Rodeo, veteran rockers Gary U.S. Bonds, legendary rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson and Ottawa blues guitarist Sue Foley at the Queen St. West venue, noted for the chassis of its namesake automobile suspended above its entrance.And Saturday, that tradition will come to an end with two performances — a matinee by seasoned guitarist Danny Marks and the grand finale: a rocking set by Hamilton’s Teenage Head.“What a way to go out — with a bang!” Grosso exclaims over the phone from his Prince Edward County ranch, where he plans to ship that chassis and hang it over his barn entrance, once the bar has been emptied early next week.It’ll be the second time the venue will be vacated in a year, following the forfeiture by buyers in 2018 of the Cadillac, which Grosso was so confident was happening that he moved everything out only to move it all back in once the purchase was nullified.“That was probably a really silly thing to do,” he admits. “Because I owned the building, I should have just put on a ‘For Lease’ sign. But because I’m so stubborn, I put everything back together. I thought maybe I’d sell the business and really try and keep it as a music venue and just be a landlord — but that really didn’t work out. So I put the building up for sale.”Marks chalks up the disappearance of such venues to “some larger problems — one being that those places are harder and harder to operate because of laws, regulations and taxes.” However, he adds that dwindling crowds are also a problem: “It’s part of the general devaluation of music.“God forbid they should pay for a cover charge fo ...
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