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For musicians, MySpace just might be the greatest promotional tool to come along since the staple gun. But songsters should take note of something I recently learned the hard way: Any business-related e-mailing really shouldn't be done with MySpace's messaging feature. E-mails in a MySpace inbox don't necessarily stick around very long, partly because when people delete their profiles -- as is known to happen in the highly volatile universe of social-networking Web sites -- any messages they sent go with them.

Who cares, right? But as I was preparing to play a private gig last Saturday afternoon, I realized to my dismay that my messages to and from the client were gone from MySpace because, yes, his profile had gone away. These were messages that contained such information as: Where the gig was, and when I was supposed to be there.

Fortunately I had made a few notes, and on the basis of them I somehow managed to show up at the right place, at the right time. And if the worst had happened, I suppose I could have -- ulp -- called him. That would have inspired confidence! Anyway, it's good to have stuff in writing. I normally save and archive my electronic messages as meticulously as any congressional page would, so it was unsettling when the MySpace messages went poof.

My advice to musicans: Be grateful that MySpace makes fielding gig inquiries so effortless, but once you've gotten a query, switch to traditional e-mail for everything else.