I spend a lot of time doing this too -- cutting up band rehearsal tapes into songs and exporting all. As weird as Audacity's UI is, I haven't found anything better than it at this.

Have you tried Ocenaudio (which is roughly the same as old school Cool Edit/Audition?)

Far more intuitive, I think. Keyboard shortcuts and cutting and pasting similar to what you'd get in e.g. Word.