DCist unfortunately didn’t have a critic there, but by all accounts Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made an onstage appearance at last night’s Neko Case concert at the 9:30 Club.

… Arne made a special appeal to the college-aged crowd to consider careers in teaching. “We have a chance to change the country,” he said. “We want to make sure every child has a great, great teacher. So I want to encourage you….Those of you who love music, love art, love math….We need that next generation of teachers coming in.”

So, OK. Yes, encouraging young people to go into teaching is a fine message. But am I the only one who isn’t particularly pleased about the idea of actual administration officials, in this case an honest to god cabinet member, interrupting our concert going experiences? It was one thing when we had band after band getting up on their soapboxes about the evils of the Bush Administration during the 2008 presidential campaign. But these are now the people in charge. It just seems, I dunno, not very rock ‘n’ roll. I certainly wouldn’t want to see Tim Geithner on stage at the Black Cat, trying to convince me that rescuing banks is the only way to save the U.S. economy.

In odd but theoretically unrelated news, a tipster sent us the photograph above, showing a fake street sign put up by the 9:30 Club, temporarily renaming part of 9th Street “Neko Case Way.” Think they got permission from DDOT before they did that?