After the lifting of restrictions which belted the tourism industry, every regional city in the country is focusing on opportunities to ignite the visitor economy.

The strategy concentrates on positioning the city as a premier tourist destination "with quirky visitor experiences as well as its signature offerings".

The campaign's tagline "Seek off beat - Visit Newcastle" and the accompanying 52-second video promo - featuring a big band inspired soundtrack - appears aimed at cashed-up 20-somethings.

What other age group could effortlessly run up a spiral staircase in high heels?

Maybe there was an incident in the mid-90s when someone older - while attempting to impersonate the Rocky Horror Picture Show's Frank-N-Furter - ran up the spiral staircase in the now-demolished Big Penis Tower while wearing high heels.

Maybe this occurred following a mild anxiety attack outside a come-as-your-favourite-film-character themed birthday party at Queens Wharf.

Maybe the person left hurriedly after spotting four other Frank-N-Furters with big feather boas waiting to get inside the venue.

Maybe, upon reflection at the top of Big Penis Tower, the boa-lacking Frank-N-Furter impersonator realised he looked more like the offspring of a love union between Blocker Roach and Alice Cooper rather than the stand-out star of Rocky Horror.

Maybe, alone there in high heels, that person realised he should have dressed as True Grit's Rooster Cogburn rather than a try-hard Frank-N-Furter.

All tears aside, the "Seek off beat-Visit Newcastle" promotion is part of the Newcastle Destination Management Plan 2021-2025.

It's a long way from 2012's Newcastle See Change video attributed to The Australian Institute of Architects.

Newcastle has changed enormously in the past decade and the contrast between the two videos amplifies that change.

But live music performances played a key role in the 2012 video, while they are absent in the new promo.

Curiously, the 2012 video showed the Scottish rugby team furiously hugging after beating the Wallabies during an east coast low at Turton Road in the same year.

That was the game where a spectator performed a spectacular starkers gut slide on the drenched field at the game's conclusion.

Doubt you'd see that today.

That was old school Newy.

While the 2022 promo shows Newcastle offers a fun time, there's no vision of the woman featured in the video enjoying live music.

She seems to relish dancing with drag performers and is awarded a feather boa for her efforts. But she then bolts with that feather boa.

Was the boa gifted or did she nick it? Probably gifted.

Scarpering with a stolen feather boa is old Newcastle, when Novocastrians used to nick anything that wasn't nailed down.

"Nicking stuff 101" was a compulsory unit in all BHP apprenticeships until 1989.

While you can't fit everything that's appealing about this city into 52 seconds, perhaps a shot of the video's protagonist dancing to live musicians could have made a touching point.

Family Hotel co-owner Dylan Oakes, a music industry veteran and the promoter of October's inaugural West Bloc Fest, says he's never seen the Newcastle music scene stronger. And that's despite ongoing humbug.

Pokies, residential developments, fewer venues, licensing laws and neighbour intolerance for amplified music are ingredients for the cocktail of blame.

Musician Ty Penshorn asked in last Thursday's Herald (Musician blasts band ban, 4/8/22) "Why can one Nanna control our entire city?"

If One Nanna Control does regulate our city, why hasn't Nan also done something useful like lobby for soap dispensers in every public toilet in the LGA?

This is Major Tom to Nan Control, take some prune juice and put your helmet on. Live music supporters are ready for a stoush.

Oi Newcastle, what have we become? While the new promo makes the city seem flash to outsiders, locals now live in the shadow of the Nine Network stuffing the news and editing out Big Dog's prayer.

At the same time, a growing intolerance toward live music from nearby neighbours escalates - even when the music finishes at 6pm.

Coincidence? Maybe. 2HD talkback callers reckon it's the New World Order. And they would know.

Does Newcastle want a reputation for a thriving live music scene, or to be rubbished as an off-Broadway Melbourne that dons the pyjamas an hour before an atheist puppet pooch tells us to go to bed?

Seek off beat -Visit Newcastle? Sure. But it would even better to see live music's "sick off-beat" feature in promos spruiking Newcastle as the premier tourist destination it deserves to be.