Search and Select Multiuple Songs Too Difficult - Help

My task is simple; I may have 100's of songs from one artist (or a cover band) but I want to quickly select a handful to either play or put into a playlist.

In the old days I would look at my entire library, search a keyword, and every song (artist, etc.) with that keyword appears. I could quickly Ctrl Click the ones I wanted and then drag them to the playlist. Now we have this clever sidebar that lists the songs. But now not only can I not see all of them at a glance nor just grab a handful; it appears that to select to add to a playlist or play them I have to scroll down the entire list and add them one-by-one.

I know how to change search parameters (artist, song, etc.). What I really want is to see my tens of thousands of songs like a file directory; to be able to manage it with a few views and clicks; not to have to wander down a list of thumbnail album covers/song titles with the risk that if you make one slip up the screen clears and you have to start the entire search over again.

I am probably missing something here because I am sure they wouldn’t have purposely tried to make managing the music so much harder and time consuming. Is there a way to get back to the old file directory format of keyword searching?