The arrests began almost as soon as the concertgoers amassed outside Madison Square Garden on Monday evening. Uniformed and plainclothes police officers moved through the crowd, picking off targets and leading them to a police van parked around the corner where they were patted down and loaded in.

A man, briefly questioned by the police, tried to run and was quickly grabbed by two officers who threw him to the ground and slapped on handcuffs, as fans in dreadlocks, fishnet stockings and tie-dyed shirts looked on.

It was the start of another night of revelry and arrests that has become something of a ritual within the traveling circus that accompanies the jam band Phish. At least 228 people were arrested or received summonses at shows on the first three nights of a four-night stand that was to end Tuesday with a New Year’s Eve performance and undoubtedly more arrests.

Illegal drugs have been woven into the fabric of the rock concert experience since before Woodstock. But fans of Phish, a Vermont band with an obsessed following reminiscent of the Grateful Dead, seem to have developed an outsize reputation among law enforcement agencies for heavy drug use.