On Quail Street, the records still spin

Last Vestige Records founder Jim Furlong earns Hall of Fame honors for a lifetime devoted to music and community

ALBANY — On Quail Street, tucked into a stretch of Albany that feels lived-in and stubbornly real, there’s a doorway that has pulled generations of music lovers inside. Behind it is Last Vestige Records, and behind that counter, more often than not, is Jim Furlong.

His story begins the way many great record-store stories do; as a kid digging through records, and learning that music wasn’t just something you heard, but something you searched for. Each album was a clue, a map, a piece of history you could hold in your hands. That instinct — to hunt, to listen closely, to care — never left him. Instead, it grew into a life’s work that has shaped the Capital Region’s music culture in ways that are hard to measure but easy to feel.

Furlong joked, “Because I broke a bunch of my mom’s 78 shellac records when I was a kid, I was doomed to be buying and selling them for the rest of my life.”

His passion and deep knowledge of music have made Last Vestige Records an enduring cornerstone of the Capital Region’s cultural landscape, and those efforts are being honored in the Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Hall of Fame. The seventh inductee class will be honored March 23 at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs.

Before Last Vestige ever had a name, he learned the craft from the ground up. At Just A Song, one of the area’s influential shops, he absorbed the basics of running a brick-and-mortar record store under the guidance of David Schlang. At World’s Record, Albany’s first used record store, Steve and Peggy Erfurt introduced him to the world of secondhand vinyl and serious collectors, where knowledge mattered and every record had a story.

“Those three people really influenced me on the retail end in various ways. They helped me figure out what I was going to do,” Furlong said.

Music was never confined to the record racks in his life. In the early ‘80s, Furlong was also a band member in the punk group The A.D.’s. When the band moved to New York City in 1983, he immersed himself in a larger, louder music ecosystem. In Chelsea, Furlong worked at Midnight Records, where J.D. Martignon taught him the ins and outs of mail-order vinyl — a lifeline for collectors long before the internet made everything instant. Around the same time, Furlong took inspiration from Felix Iavarone, a local trailblazer who sold records out of his family’s tailor shop, ran a mail-order business, and organized Albany’s first record collector fairs. Together, those experiences showed Furlong that caring deeply about music wasn’t just about collecting it — it was something you could build a life, and a community, around.

In 1984, Jim did exactly that, launching Last Vestige as a mail-order operation. Five years later, on Halloween night in 1989, it became a physical store—an intentional act of faith in Albany and its music lovers. By 1994, Last Vestige settled into its longtime home at 173 Quail Street, where it would grow into far more than a retail space.

“I wasn’t sure how far it would go. Honest to God, I did not know.”

Furlong never chased trends or tried to scale up into something impersonal. The impact of Last Vestige comes from consistency — showing up, knowing your records, respecting the music, and respecting the people who love it. And for Furlong, “I really appreciate and love my wife, who supported me 100% over the years. I’ve had a lot of great employees… and I’m proud of them.” In an era of when independent shops are disappearing, his store stands as proof that authenticity still matters.

“This was the one thing where I could use my head instead of my body — and actually have fun doing it.”

More than thirty years later, Last Vestige Records remains exactly what its name suggests: a surviving piece of something essential. And Jim Furlong, shaped by punk shows, mail-order catalogs, used bins, and mentors who believed in doing things the right way, continues to give the Capital Region a place where music history lives — not behind glass, but in your hands.

“As the Dead say, ‘what a long, strange trip it’s been.’”

The inductee ceremony is open to the public and includes musical performances, a social hour, videos on the musical career of each inductee, and acceptance speeches. Tickets are on sale now through the Box Office at Proctors in-person, via phone at (518) 346-6204 from 12.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday or online by visiting atuph.org.

Universal Preservation Hall and Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Hall of Fame are a part of Proctors Collaborative. For more information on the Hall of Fame visit theeddiesawards.com.