Edges which share a face seem to block the 'select edge loop' function

[Justanother1]

as far as work around steps ...
Keyboard shortcut (I) will select all the same.
using (CTRL) with box select will de-select things (if you only wanted the top, not the bottom)
if you do an INSET on those Pie-cut faces you will then be able to Edge-loop select, I use this a lot.
I've assigned shortcuts for smooth and hard edges, the marked hard edges will be cut when UV-mapping,
also there's a Manifold-lab function "Expand to Charted Region" that will expand your face selection to marked hard edges (but don't use this in UV-mode, Crashes) I've got that on a Shortcut too ....
You can also stop and edge-loop select by selecting perpendicular edges at the beginning and end of your selection