It didn’t bode well when Dictators front man Handsome Dick Manitoba responded to my e-mailed interview request by calling me a "Red Sox knucklehead." I nonetheless took the high road: "I’m tempted to say ‘Yankees suck!’" I shot back. "But I’m bigger than that. We just won the Super Bowl, and I’m feeling magnanimous."

The rejoinder came within minutes. "Football? WHO CARES! Let’s talk 1918! p.s. You could say the Yankees suck, but you KNOW that it’s not true!"

Aw, c’mon Dick. Can’t we just agree to disagree?

Anyone who caught the reunited punk progenitors at the old Lilli’s last spring might remember HDM — as buff and brash as he was in his wrasslin’ days — flashing his Bronx Bombers jersey and taunting the audience about the Olde Towne Team’s luckless eight decades. But Mr. Manitoba, reached by phone at home in NYC, wants to make it clear that he does like Boston. Really.

"It’s one of our good cities," he says. "Maybe I’ll joke around or fuck with the audience, but Boston’s always been a great town for the Dictators."

But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy for him to reconcile the two. "I once ran into a kid wearing a Red Sox hat and a Dictators T-shirt," he says. "I felt like going, ‘Hey, what’s up, man?!’ But at the same time, there was this thing repelling me. It was like a speedball of emotions."

But enough about sports. There are more pressing issues to discuss. Like, for instance, "Who Will Save Rock ’n’ Roll?" That’s the title of the first track on the excellent new DFFD, the Dictators’ first studio album in 23 years. It’s also a question that now more than ever desperately requires an answer. Mr. Manitoba thinks he has it.

"We probably will."

Doubt it at your own peril. As the music industry becomes increasingly commercialized, factionalized, and lobotomized, the ’Tators — their two-decade breather notwithstanding — have been around the block enough times to know what rock and roll once was and what it should continue to be: "Dancing and fucking music," in the words of Mr. Manitoba.

DFFD (for "Dictators Forever, Forever Dictators") is a ringing affirmation of that world-view. Its songs, all with to-the-point titles like "The Savage Beat," "Pussy and Money," and "Burn, Baby, Burn," are rousing punk-metal anthems, fueled by monster riffs and jokey lyrics (all penned by bassist Andy Shernoff), marked by machismo and a twisted brand of social commentary. Not too far removed, in other words, from the Dictators’ seminal 1975 debut, Go Girl Crazy! After all, why fix what ain’t broke?

It would be something of a validation if the Dictators did end up as rock-and-roll messiahs after all. Because, in the eyes of some, they wuz robbed the first time around. Go Girl Crazy! — with its deification of cars, weekends, bad TV, ersatz Nazism, and cheeseburgers — was followed a year later by the debut from the Ramones, who were able to bring the same troglodyte riffs, adolescent fixations, and leather jackets to a much larger audience.

But the Dictators don’t feel like victims of circumstance. "I’m very proud of the Ramones," says HDM. "Them being successful doesn’t take anything away from me. I know who we are. I know what we’ve done. After 25 years, it’s just a great feeling that people give a shit about what we created. It means something. I don’t look back and think, ‘Well, if history was different ...’ or ‘I’m bitter because ...’ That’s the way it turned out. Things happen for a reason. I’m fairly happy with my lot in life."

So he’s content. But the more important question is this: is Mr. Dick Manitoba still the handsomest man in rock ’n’ roll?

"Always was. Always will be."

The Dictators play next Saturday, February 23 at Axis, 13 Lansdowne Street, in Boston. Tickets are $12; call (617) 262-2605.