YourHub.com: Tell me about the history behind Twist & Shout.

Paul Epstein: My wife and I, Jill who's been my partner from day one, bought it at a tax auction in 1988. It had been Underground Records. I actually moved to Colorado in '68 and started shopping there immediately. So I had a history with the store from its beginnings. We were both high school English teachers at the time and it was the first day of our spring break and we hadn't even thought through how we would run a retail business. But we did and the rest is history. In '95 we moved to Alameda in between there we had a store at the Tivoli for a couple years then we opened our vinyl store across the street from Alameda in around 98 or 99 and then last year we moved over to Colfax. That's kind of the basic timeline

YH: So Underground was more a specialty shop?

PE: Underground was kind of what an independent record store was in the '60s and '70s. It was half record store, half head shop, half groovy social gathering place. We kind of ran with that identity.

YH: How important is it to be seen as a social gathering place?

PE: It is important for my record store to survive. I don't know if it is for everybody. I think it's important that some on-site owner has stayed true to what his original vision was. For someone else it may have been fist-pumping stadium anthem rock headquarters tied into sports and as long as they stayed true to that, they might still be succeeding. For me it was that connection to the cool underground hip subversive '60s kind of scene.

YH: So who all do you connect with?

PE: There's the inner city world - the whole Colfax and Capitol Hill and Congress Park world. There's the cultural world of having the Tattered Cover and Neighborhood Flix right there - these kind of oldschool cultural icons together and our connection to the local band scene which has never been stronger and more meaningful to our store. As the music industry spasms and gets weird, people are looking for something that feels like it used to.

YH: What do you think is behind the strength of the local scene right now?

PE: I think the Denver music scene is stronger than its ever been. There's an incredible crop of bands right now whether it's Devotchka or Flobots or Born in the Flood or Bela Karoli or Ian Cooke, there's so many amazing bands bubbling to the surface and getting signed and becoming something. I'm not sure if there's any reason for that or a function of history. It's finally Denver's time. There's always been a lot of really cool bands in Denver and people are noticing.

YH: You've been outspoken about your belief that the sky isn't falling for record stores. What makes you so confident of it?

PE: I've been pretty specific that it wasn't falling on Twist and Shout. I'd have to be blind deaf and dumb to say the industry itself isn't going through some fairly heavy changes. It is. I think there are stores like ours - kind of a string of independent stores throughout the country that have managed to stay relevant and each one is a different story. It's the same story. They stayed true to their vision. They didn't get too heavily involved in the industry and the business side of it and stayed true to the music side of it and the love of music, which got most of us into it. The industry itself just twists you like a pretzel to make you screwed up the way they are and we've fought that really hard and kept our ear to the ground as far as a bunch of trends.

YH: What's wrong with the record industry?

PE: Everything is so much about the objectification of culture and the immediate gratification and sale of stuff instead of a long-term appreciation of art and enhancement of the human spirit. It's more about this massive pushing of product through the market. It's not driven by youth excitement which it was in the '60s, in the '50s, and it's not driven by incredible artistry in the '60s and '70s. Starting around the disco era, the business itself started really developing. It's just had a profound - when you put business guys in charge of art, it's like oil and water. It doesn't mix and they screw it up. It's art and instead of museums getting a hold of it, these crafty businessmen got a hold of it and exploited it and took away the mystique.

YH: The celebrations for Twist and Shout's 20 th anniversary coincide with National Record Store Day. Is this a happy coincidence?

PE: It is a coincidence. We bought the store in April. National Record Store Day on the 19 th, it is just a coincidence and it makes perfect sense for us because we are a record store. We're kind of one of the last. I am always optimistic that things are going to turn around but we've seen a lot of stores close. A lot of stores that haven't been able to stay relevant to their community, which is really what we've done - we were very early to adopt other things. We're not just CDs and records. We have a huge movie section. We have all this lifestyle stuff. Toys, games clothes. All kinds of stuff. We've tried to become a pop culture store that's largely driven by music. That's what we are. That whole weekend we're going to have a really special concert with an up-and-coming artist Jackie Greene. He's been compared to a young Dylan. He's played with a lot of great 60s guys and have noticed him and included him in their work. He's gonna play a concert in the movie theater behind our store. We got them to agree to let us use one of their rooms. We're going to have a sale, give out cake and champagne. The record industry is stepping up like I haven't seen them do in a long time. There's going to be all kinds of cool singles and giveaways and different CDs they're putting out just for that. I think Sony is putting out a record, an LP and the back cover is a picture from our store. A lot of really cool stuff focused on that weekend, live music in the store and on Sunday we're going to have some DJs from various local radio stations play records in the store.

YH: The neighborhood actually supports a number of stores. In the same area there's Independent and Wax Trax, and other ones further out.

PE: I think there probably always have been more here than in other cities. Back in the heyday 10 or 15 years ago there were four or five world-class record stores in Denver. You could shop like a fiend here and find everything and it's still like that. There are probably more independent record stores surviving in Denver. You also don't want to forget Jerry's Record Exchange and Black and Red. The industry is shooting itself in the foot so quickly with the race toward download technology and the abandonment of physical goods, which has more than just a passing connection to the artform. The physical thing is part of the artform. As long as decent music is coming out, and the local scene is really exciting for us retailers - the successes of Flobots and Devotchka and the Fray have been exciting for us to sell these kinds of numbers. Meese is coming along too. They're going to be huge. To sell these kinds of numbers of local albums - we can't even sell national albums at these numbers.

YH: So why are record stores important enough to celebrate? What's wrong with other outlets?

PE: The thing that turned me on, the Beatles and Dylan and Hendrix - I consider that art. I consider those people to be the artists of my generation like Shakespeare was to his generation or Fitzgerald or Faulkner or whoever. Whatever great artist of their generation summed up the feelings of that time period, that's the way I feel about it. We consider what we do kind of a sacred trust. Art is important. It's not just commerce. It's important to the human mind experience.