The end of my weekends as a boy were generally marked by the theme music to the worthily dull BBC consumerist programme 'That's Life' that aired late in the evening on a Sunday. A stultifying hodge podge of time share exposes, cowboy builders, terminally ill children and suggestively shaped vegetables, I'd watch it on borrowed time, grim with the knowledge that as soon as that brass band end theme struck up then the day had nothing more to offer and it was time for bed. A recurring obsession on the show was the Trimphone telephone and it's electronic 'ring' tone. Scarcely a week would go by without some glakey member of the public demonstrating their party piece of imitating its sound. The hilarity reached a peak/nadir with an onscreen competition for the best imitator in which a real Trimphone was entered without the knowledge of the blindfolded judges who failed to award it first prize. How they laughed.
'Good Luck Charm' kind of reminds me of all this carry on. Compared to the bright, wake up ring of Presley's early career, 'Good Luck Charm' sounds akin to the flat, dull fart of a Trimphone, lacking the urgency to get to wherever the endlessly repeating melody resolutely fails to carry it. It's not rock and roll, but then neither is it much of anything else - there's a vague barbershop quartet sheen to the tune, but 'Good Luck Charm' is the sound of Elvis coasting in neutral, foot off the gas and seat fully reclined - if this was entered into a 1962 Elvis Presley soundalike competition then I doubt it would have taken first place either. Time for bed Mr Presley.
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