The Market Tavern no longer stands – this plaque sits on part of a housing development that occupies its former site.

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The story of Kidderminster’s appetite for emerging and new forms of music is all to evident from the story of the Frank Freeman Dance club that can be found elsewhere among  these tales of Kidderminster’s historic plaques. However, when, in the early 1990s the musical appetite of the area’s young people was being excited by new sounds, Frank was sadly no longer available to accommodate it.

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Instead the action migrated to the Market Taven, adjacent to the then livestock market, a pub with a tradition of live music, which grew to be a venue with a national and even international reputation for New Wave music with both fans and bands.

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Headline name groups such as Radiohead, Catatonia and Chumbawamba played  there as did very many more local and less celebrated performers. Mark Badgeman who promoted the venue for this genre, set down its history in a book published in 2020 and people with the fondest memories of the place crowd funded the creation of this permanent memorial of the totemic venue.

 

For information of some of the towns most celebrated people see Notable Local People