Great Buildings rose out of the legendary L.A. band The Quick, signed to CBS Records, and in early 1981 they released this power pop love letter to the tradition of The Hollies, The Kinks, and The Beatles as filtered through the sunny L.A. suburbs. The album did nothing chart-wise, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it slams with the stuff great pop albums are made of: muscular power chords, open-sky harmonies, weighty key changes, and an overall sense of escapist bubblegum positivism (both “Dream That Never Dies” and “Hold on to Something” feel like rushes of sugar and Paxil). Elsewhere, there are sing-song war metaphors for troubled relationships (“Combat Zone”), punchy odes to boredom and indecision (“Another Day in My Life,” “One Way Out”), and a little anthem for outsiders (the title song). The band featured Danny Wilde and Phil Solem, who in the '90s found chart-topping success with The Rembrandts. (That duo's claim to cultural fame will forever be the authorship of “I’ll Be There for You,” The Rembrandts' Monkees-esque theme song to Friends.)