How many bands would you consider yourself a hardcore fan of?

about 4 bands

Give or take the occasional mediocre live album or unauthorized collection of middling outtakes, I would not want to be without the complete recorded works of:

MX-80 (Sound)
Led Zeppelin
Beatles
Love
John Coltrane Quartet (and, eventually, Quintet)
Velvet Underground
P-Funk
Captain Beefheart
minutemen

Black Sabbath, Pere Ubu, Van Halen, Motorhead all coulda made this list but for unfortunate changes in personnel that altered 'em forever. (My support for most bands is mile-wide/inch-thick.)

Melt-Banana
Aretha Franklin

different collections were built up at different points in my life . . .

high school:

The Misfits/Samhain
Throbbing Gristle
Velvet Underground
Swans
Sonic Youth
Einsturzende Neubauten

college:

Nurse With Wound
Enoch Light
Borbetomagus
Autechre
AMM

grad school:

Iannis Xenakis

In terms of sheer number of releases owned it is a tie between Nurse WIth Wound and Enoch Light.

for me, most of the bands around the mr bungle axis - faith no more, fantomas, secret chiefs 3, trevor dunn's trio convulsant, lovage, ASVA, tomahawk, etc. not only do I have all the official releases, but I'm also awash with bootleg audio and video. I suppose that qualifies as 'hardcore'.

2.5

ever since file-sharing got easy i haven't had the displeasure of being obsessed with any band to the point of buying every crappy album, thank god.