Rachel Simmons and the Blank Cassette Tape That Asked for Perfect Timing (1989)
Rachel Simmons still remembers how a blank cassette tape could feel like a promise in 1989—quiet plastic, clean reels, and just enough empty space to hold whatever her heart was trying to say that week.
This memory is brought to you by Oh Sherri Irish Pub — Testing the partner system
This story is brought to you by
Oh Sherri Irish Pub
Testing the partner system
Visit Oh Sherri Irish Pub →Making a mix tape took effort. You had to wait for songs to come on the radio and hit record at just the right moment. Sometimes the DJ talked over the intro. Sometimes you missed the first few seconds. But when you got it right, it felt like you had created something personal and meaningful.
The handwritten list on the blank tape
There’s something disarmingly honest about the item Rachel Simmons kept: a blank cassette tape with a handwritten song list. Not an album bought already complete, not a neat little product with a barcode telling you what it is—something that depended on her attention to become real. Even the handwriting matters, because it’s proof that the tape existed before the music did, that she pictured the finished thing in her mind and then went after it one track at a time.
In 1989, the radio wasn’t background noise for Rachel Simmons—it was a gatekeeper. A song didn’t belong to her just because she loved it; it belonged to the airwaves until she managed to catch it. That waiting—finger hovering near the record button, volume set just right, the room narrowed down to the speaker and her own breathing—was part of the work. It wasn’t passive listening. It was pursuit.
The DJ’s voice, right where you didn’t want it
Rachel Simmons remembers the small heartbreaks that came with the job: the DJ talking over the intro, the uninvited chatter stamped onto what was supposed to be a clean beginning. And the other kind of frustration—the moment you realize you were a beat late and the first seconds are gone, sliced off forever. That’s what made it personal in a way streaming will never understand: the imperfections weren’t defects in a file; they were the evidence of a real night, a real attempt, a real person trying to get it right.
It’s easy to picture her sitting close enough to the radio that she could react fast, eyes flicking between the cassette deck and whatever she’d written on that song list. The blank tape wasn’t blank for long. It slowly filled with choices—songs that felt like something, songs she wanted near her, songs that could carry what she didn’t feel like saying out loud.
When it finally landed
And then there’s the moment Rachel Simmons names as the payoff: when she got it right. That clean capture—no DJ stepping on the first line, no clipped opening, just the song arriving in full—must have felt like snapping a photograph at exactly the right second. The satisfaction wasn’t only that she owned the music. It was that she earned it.
That’s why her mix tape mattered. The finished cassette didn’t just play songs; it played her patience. It held her timing. It carried the private thrill of hearing the radio give up something she wanted and knowing she was ready, right then, to keep it.
Years later, that handwritten list is still a kind of map back to 1989—a reminder that Rachel Simmons once built meaning out of waiting, and turned a blank tape into proof that attention can become a keepsake.
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About the Storyteller
Rachel Simmons
Memory from 1989