ALL that mud, ale and bravado knocking about...a British festival really can provide the most direct way of confirming whether your band is as popular as chart placings might claim.
For Anders SG – male vocalist with Danish breath of fresh air Alphabeat – it was the launching of lager at the sextet that aided realisation.
"There was a lot of beer thrown at T In The Park – a beer is shower," he says. "That is supposed to be a good thing, right? Well, they looked very happy when they threw the beer at me."
Providing it was beer.
With the prices charged for a festival pint these days, it probably was validation that these happy-go-lucky Danes were making the right noises.
But it was Glastonbury that really confirmed the band behind massive feelgood hits 10,000 Nights and Fascination have won a place in the hearts and iPods of UK dwellers.
"We were a bit worried about playing there. It was the only festival we knew from Denmark but we looked at the bill and we were the most pop band playing. So we were excited and worried."
But when a capacity crowd turned out for their set the Alphabeat boys and girls smiled and chalked it up as another victory.
"I thought, if we can get like 10,000 people to come and see us the rest of the summer should be a piece of pee."
None of this has happened overnight. The cast of Alphabeat – there's two more Anders, Troels the drummer, keyboards man Rasmus and Stine Bramsen, who supplies female vocals – have been together for six years operating under many names before settling on the current one.
Anders, who brings his band back to Sheffield for a Leadmill show on November 7, says some of them were too terrible to divulge. "You don't want to know," he laughs. "We had so many, like any other band. For three days it was one thing, then something else. We got our deal and were relieved another band had the same name as us then as we really wanted to change."
While Alphabeat's sound is unashamedly pop, it wasn't always that way. And, contrary to some reports, they weren't intent on modelling themselves on 80s Scottish pop acts Deacon Blue and Prefab Sprout.
"We didn't really know of Deacon Blue although I am a big Prefab Sprout fan," says Anders, ahead of new single Boyfriend being released Monday.
"We started off the first year and a half, maybe two years, just messing around in our rehearsal space. Everyone was writing songs back then and trying to get a clue about which direction we wanted to go in.
"Then Anders (B, guitarist) had this Fascination song. It was very much different but we really liked it. And he had lots of songs like that. So then we were very much a band going for a sound – Fascination had a vibe between David Bowie's Modern Love and So Excited By The Pointer Sisters. But you never actually hit it off exactly like the stuff you are trying to rip off."
Having swapped hometown Silkeborg for the Danish capital Copenhagen it was when British fans began mailing the band via Myspace they realised they could make their mark elsewhere.
Now based in London, they've just had a whirlwind year since committing full-time to the band.
"That was the first time we started doing it 100 per cent. We had day jobs in Denmark – me and Anders our bass player worked in a kindergarden.
"But we went to London and did some showcases and it went quite fast from there. And we love it over here. It is very different to Denmark – the view on music is different where pop is something only for the mainstream – so many people are afraid to not seem cool. Over here people listen to all sorts and don't really care if it is cool, probably because of your music history."
Alphabeat are, though, in a tradition of Scandinavian acts from A-ha to Abba breaking into England and singing in the local lingo. Anders says there was no debate over them using English lyrics.
"It's not like Denmark is this nationalistic country – we've been to other countries where they ask us why, but we've never considered anything else. In Denmark people easily relate to it and in pop music you should do something that not only part of the whole world should understand. Our lyrics are superficial, very simple and people are supposed to understand them from the first minute.
"We don't have much trouble with the language, although sometimes making a simple lyric you can get away with is harder than doing other stuff. There's always the grammar and stuff but we've got six people in the band to help get it right."
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