Arlo Guthrie's second album is nothing if not pleasant. For that reason, if his career expands in the fashion suggested by this record, he should above all avoid being unpleasant.

The LP opens with a story-and-song rendition of "The Motorcycle Song," complete with audience participation. (The album was recorded live at the Bitter End in New York.) The charm of Guthrie's humor is that it is simple, ordinary, and gentle. Anyone can do it. Guthrie does it well. However, more than very infrequent listening to the humorous segments on this album will risk one's impatience, because of the humor's very simplicity, ordinariness, and gentleness. Repeated, it is merely blunt. Strangely enough, "The Motorcycle Song," in the melody line that ends the verse, conveys the sadness of aftermath present in many of these songs. "And I don't want to die," it ends with the pure strength of a hymn, "Just want to ride my motorcy(cle)."

The most impressive and moving piece in the collection is "Would You Believe It," also the most tightly composed, arranged, and performed. "In the candle, life burn away/Leaving nothing except the day Just to blow your mind away . . ." The piece conjures up the same sparse, lonely feeling as "All Along the Watchtower", both melodically and lyrically.

"Try Me One More Time," which Guthrie bills as "an old Lyndon Johnson campaign song," is another highlight, with a great funky piano. Vocally, Guthrie's insight into country is superb.

"John Looked Down," with an inexplicable, though, for all I know, brilliant lyric, is musically compelling. "Meditation (Wave Upon Wave)" is interesting for a hard-rock (hard-folk?) use of tabla, and a sense of sadness at war with Guthrie's bouncy (what more can I say?) guitar: "All of the beautiful mountains beyond/ Can surely not tempt me to stay . . . /Wave upon wave of life within me, give me the strength to go on..."

"Standing at the Threshold" has a curious Peter, Paul, and Mary sound. I can just see Mary Travers intensely gesticulating at the more profound lines (those with the word "love").

"The Pause of Mr. Clause" is another monologue song. The jokes are funny (once), but the song is more simple-minded that simple. Arlo should sing.

The trouble here is that, after the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Donovan, among others, have returned to the purity of their sources, Guthrie has confused simplicity with that purity. Simplicity is fine, too, but does not as well lend itself to repetition. (RS 20)

ARTHUR SCHMIDT