2011 Ultimate Classic Rock Awards: Tour of the Year

The first annual Ultimate Classic Rock Awards are here, and they are your chance to vote for the best rock music of 2011. Over the next week, we will be announcing nominees for the year’s best classic rock albums, songs, tours, artists and more — 10 categories in all — and allowing our readers to pick the winners in each.

We’ll begin with the Tour of the Year category: After all, if there’s one place classic rockers undeniably dominate the music landscape, it is in the live performance setting. This year featured two big summer tour team-ups: Journey, Foreigner and Night Ranger combined to bring fans a hit-packed evening, and Motley Crue brought Poison and the New York Dolls along for their typically extravagant trek.

Of course, some bands decided to go it alone, too. Rush continued their ‘Time Machine’ tour, which featured the band playing their 1981 ‘Moving Pictures’ album in its entirety. Kiss proved the worth of their music by scaling down their stage show to play long-awaited concerts in smaller cities for much of the summer, and even as we speak, Guns N’ Roses are making an emphatic case for the power of their new lineup and the ‘Chinese Democracy’ album with 3-hour marathon shows all across the land.

Let’s not forget Alice Cooper, who dazzled audiences around the world with a career-spanning show of surprising ferocity prior to the release of his ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ album. That album, by the way, has already earned the No. 1 spot on our list of the Top 10 Albums of 2011, in addition to spawning what we’ve labeled the year’s best new song, ‘I’ll Bite Your Face Off.’

But those were our staff’s choices; this one is up to you. Select which one of the six aforementioned tours you thought was the best. You have until 11:59 PM on Jan. 1, 2012, and the winners will be announced Tuesday, Jan, 3.