It’s a well known fact that guys start bands because they are too nerdy to meet girls on their own. In fact, the key to go from being a nerd to being cool is to somehow learn to take your nerdy skills and make them awesome. You like your chemistry set? Great. Learn to blow things up in an aesthetically pleasing manner. You like math? Great. Become an Internet billionaire. But I think the greatest moments of geek awesomeness have happened in music, when people have taken skills that are profoundly uncool and transformed them into something we can all headbang in the car to.

For example, after being accused of only writing songs about partying, women, and cars, David Lee Roth issued a correction — actually, he has not yet written a song about a car. He then writes “Panama,” the only song to date recorded using a Lamborghini as an in-studio session instrument. This phenomenally cool move compensates for Roth doing something as nerdy as ribbon dancing in the music video.

Even more geekaliciously pwning are the drums for “When the Levee Breaks,” the sickest beat known to man. (This is a scientifically verified fact, with results published by Dr. Rawk N. Rawles in his Ph.D dissertation entitled “Quantification of Sickness Induced by Led.”) This wicked sound was created by placing John Bonham at the bottom of a stairwell with a brand-spankin’ new kit at Headley Grange. The riff is recorded by two mikes three stories up, compressed, distorted, and then slowed down for the song’s signature muddy, down-and-dirty drive.

In probably the sexiest mix of robotics club nerd and rock star glory, Norman Greenbaum recorded Spirit in the Sky on two guitars. The lead bits are recorded on a 61-62 SG Les Paul, a 68 Marshall Plexi 100w half stack and a home-made overdrive box. As if this DIY win wasn’t enough, he went on to record the song’s singular sounding buzz riffs by building an overdrive circuit into the pickguard and a fuzz box into the body of a Fender Telecaster and started screwing around by simultaneously using the bridge humbucker and the pickup switch.

Bring, it, geeks. The gods of rock compel you. And if that’s not enough, it is so a good way to get girls to talk to you.