I’VE LOST TRACK OF ALL THE AMAZING MOMENTS

1983 was a good year for music. David Bowie, Depeche Mode and U2 all released great albums. The Sony CD player changed at-home music listening forever. And at 6 p.m. on that Jan. 11, in a tiny studio in Tijuana, 91X was born with a record scratch; we abruptly ended “Stairway to Heaven” and began a radio revolution.

With all the changes we’ve lived through over the years, celebrating 40 years of 91X feels like a big deal. We didn’t actually use CDS until later in the ’80s. It was all vinyl in the beginning. One of the first songs we ever played on the air was “Lies” by the Thompson Twins, albeit a very slow version — the DJ unknowingly played the record at

is music director and midday DJ at 91X. She lives in Pacific Beach. the wrong speed. An intern finally let him know, so he sped it up in real time. I love that story! Mistakes are one of my favorite things to hear on the air, and I still make them all the time. You just have to roll with it as a DJ.

When I started on 91X in 1997, we played almost exclusively CDS, though they would also skip if they got scratched enough. We still have drawers full of those in our music library, as well as floor-to-ceiling shelves full of vinyl. Stepping into that room fills me with reverence, it really does. There’s so much history and magic in it. We still play some vinyl and CDS, but most of our music now has been digitized.

Last year, I celebrated 25 years on the air in San Diego; of all the stations I’ve worked on, 91X feels like my radio home. When I first started here, I was a kid renting an apartment with peeling

BRITTANY CRUZ-FEJERAN Hilary Doneux poses in the studio of the 91X radio station in San Diego.