It was back at the turn of the year when Sid initially got in touch. The e-mail was entitled ‘Cheers, Happy New Year’ and it said:-
Still enjoying your blog Mr Villain! Thought I’d be a little presumptuous and send you some Billy in the form of a little-heard version of It’s Over just featuring the orchestra. BEF dragged it out of their vaults a few years back.
Hard to believe that it will be 18 years ago this month since Billy died.
Happy to dredge my vault for anything you might want on the Billy front if you are thinking of a wee post later in the month. I do have an awfie lot.
Orrabest
Sid Law
From there we hatched a plan with the intention of having a whole week’s worth of posts in the run-up to the anniversary but stormy weather and power-cuts in Sid’s neighbourhood led to delays and this change of tack.
After I’d thanked him for sending me the orchestral mix of It’s Over, Sid quickly sent over another e-mail with an example of the sort of rarities he has.
Another from Billy. His take on Randy Newman’s “Baltimore”.
A version of the track (there are a couple) appeared on the ridiculously limited edition posthumous “Wild Is The Wind EP” on Paul Haig’s ROL label (Paul Haig had nothing to do with the actual recording – it ain’t a MacKenzie/Haig number).
The song never re-appeared on any of the posthumous CD album issues of unreleased material and hasn’t been seen or heard since.
Enjoy.
Sid Law
mp3 : Billy Mackenzie – Baltimore
As our benefactor says, enjoy.
I should mention that Sid very generously supplied high-quality rips of all the songs. It’s my decision to pare these back to mere CD quality for the blog. At the end of it all, I’m intending to put the hi-quality versions up for a short period of time.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Thanks for this and for Sid’s wonderful shares – much appreciated! 🙂
Simply beautiful. When Billy covered a song, he had a way of really making it his. This is true of Baltimore, Secret Life Of Arabia, It’s Over, The Crying Game, Free, Wild Is The Wind…