Is Remote Control Important?

How important is Remote Control to you when selecting components for your system. Do you consider buying products that don't have Remote Control, or only ones that do? If you had the choice of a CD player that was the best sounding, but had no Remote Control capability, would you buy it? Or would you buy the next best thing that had a Remote Control.

One reason why I ask this is, I have a friend who just sold me his entire LP collection because he said that he would never play them again, because he would have to get up off the couch to change records. When this same friend's reciever broke, I offered to loan him one of mine, but he refused because it had no Remote Control, and he would have to get up to change the volume. In his opinion, no music was better than having to get up to change the volume. And no amount of performance would substitute for a Remote Control.

Is this a predominant view in the audiophile world? Is convenience more important than performance?