Los Angeles

It's about all the different cities named Los Angeles.

"I think I finally figured out my new song, 'Los Angeles', this morning. They got one in South Patagonia, they got another Los Angeles in Mexico, they got so many Los Angeleses. Bangkok has a Los Angeles, I read recently. I imagine there's a lot of places in the world named City Of Angels. I wrote about a futuristic one too: 'They got one in 2525, where it's just like a beehive.' I mean that kind of Los Angeles you might see in a film like Blade Runner."

• Frank Black in VOX, Issue 30, March 1993

Kind of nitpicking, but it's "the symphony of the fairlight", one word. A Fairlight was a kind of synthesizer, and in fact there's a fairlight solo right after that line.

i think he's saying that there is a dichotomy in los angeles between the hollywood stereotype of glamour ("I hear them saying Los Angeles, In all the black and white movies.") and the sections in the barrio which are more like south america than the U.S.

From the LA Times:

"Channeling that, Black came up with "Los Angeles," which remains the signature song of his solo career. It's about many different L.A.s – one in Patagonia, another our metropolis and its halo of helicopters. There's also the one in old black-and-white films and another that "buzzes like a beehive" in the year 2525, a.k.a. "Blade Runner."

this song kicks ass. it's played on eric koston's part in Girl's Yeah Right! (skateboard video).

It looks as if Frank Black tends to base his lyrics on personal experiences, on places he has been to or people he has met (like in "Crackity Jones"). This seems to be the case with "Los Angeles": it opens with the line "I met a man / he was a good man...". It makes me think that Frank Black one day met somebody from Chile and got in awe of this South American city...

He's talking about Los Angeles on another planet.

And Yeah Right! is probably my favorite skate video of all time.

I actually think he is talking about Los Angeles, CA. Even though he mentions another LA, he makes several allusions that are synonymous with LA, CA...for example "Counting helicopters on a Saturday night, The symphony of the fair light" or "But if you think they star-spangled us, How come we say Los Angeleez? "

Maybe even if the song is titled "Los Angeles" and mentions a city called like that, it's not speaking about those cities in particular, but maybe it uses them to make a reference to something else. There is, in fact, a small city in Chile named Los Angeles, but it is not located in the Patagonia, since Patagonia is a vast portion of plains located mailny in Argentina. Even though Patagonia includes some Chilean territory, Los Angeles lays more to the north. But I think Frank Black's idea was to make reference to this Chilean spot.

Perhaps this song deals with the Mexican/Spanish influence on California, and hence the questioning about the name of the city even though the hegemony of an English-speaking country over the U.S.A.

good find 'manteray', i didn't think the lyric was "They got ones down in factory five, Works just like a beehive." its "well they've got one in twenty-five two five, where it's just like like a beehive"

and yes 'Fairlight' is one word, 'Fairlight CMI' was the first digital audio sampler, made by 'Fairlight' in Sydney in 1979.