Action Item the band started in 2007, with five members and a steadily growing fan base. Based in New Jersey, their fans became a small community over years. They were personable and small enough in fame that they could regularly do things like attending house parties and have long conversations with their fans after shows. This was a plus to the teen to the young adult crowd they were catering to especially since other bands were so high up on pedestals. It made them seem really genuine. The point I'm trying to make is that even though they were not well-known, they were kind and that set them apart. They treated their fans like friends while keeping the right amount of celebrity to still seem like real big time rock stars.

Maybe you haven't heard of them but, getting into the reason I'm writing this article I'm sure there is going to be a name brought up that you do know: Halsey.

This article isn't about her but, she's a part of it by association to the bands guitarist Anthony Li, now her manager.

In 2014, the band was having a large amount of success. A member of the band, Mark Shami, had left in order to pursue a career in the jewelry industry. He now runs The M Jewelers, a brand worn by many celebrities. From the success of the band thus far, the remaining band members decided to do something popular at the time: get money from their fans in the form terms of an Indiegogo campaign. The campaign went insanely well, and a large reason for that was the prizes. They played on the fact that people saw them so genuinely. For four thousand dollars you could do what the advertisement called "Work Hard/Play Hard". The band promised to fly two people to New Jersey, go to dinner, have a city day with the band and then go to the city to watch them record a part of the album they were funding for. For $600, you could go to their houses for dinner. For $400, you could write a song with Anthony Li. For the same price, they got VIP for life, at every future concert of the band's career. At least one person purchased each of these things, along with smaller prizes. In total the band raised $34,645 in a few months. They ended the campaign with a lot more than their $25,000 goal.

Then thing's got tricky. All of the sudden things that the band were doing album wise slowly crawled to a halt. Fans were confused. The band played a free show in Syracuse in August 2014 and that seems to have been their last show, based on their Twitter that has been inactive for almost two years. Maybe it was September of that year. It's all kind of fuzzy in terms of what happened next, and maybe that's what the band wanted in order to give the illusion things were in the process of being done. Fans started to rally together to try to figure out what was going on, and if they had indeed been scammed by a band that they had supported for years. The band put out two EP's between July 2014 and April 2015. Then the band went silent. Some moved on to lives of normalcy, well-deserved time off is what some fans wanted to see it as. There was no formal breakup, so there was no need to feel as though things had been abandoned. But then time went on, and the rough realization hit: the band was not getting back together anytime soon.

Now I know what you're thinking, it's just a band. That's true, and I'm not going to give a sappy explanation as to why the band meant so much to me. Looking back, we as a society put too much faith into musicians who are just regular people who have their own agendas. I started to care less and less. As I started to hear about rumors of the band members doing normal things like getting engaged, starting normal careers and so on, I was happy for them. They're humans after all, not just musical robots.

However, I feel the need to write this for the friends I met through this band. The ones who loved the music of this band so much that they got tattooed lyrics, or spent four hundred dollars on "VIP for life" only to never even get one experience out of it. I don't know exact statistics or who was given what they promised as I didn't contribute money, so couldn't try to refund it or ask any questions. Given the fact that one-third of the album remains unfinished, there was no tour and the outcry in fan groups was one of anger, I'd guess a lot of people got played. In a comment in one of their Facebook groups circa November 2015 soon after their last single, a backer of the campaign wrote: "We've emailed Anthony so many times about trying to get out money back and he won't respond. We paid 600 to have a dinner party with them."

Shortly after this, Indiegogo changed their refund policy and may have refunded the money without permission from the band. I've reached out to some backers with no response yet to see if money was returned. I want to make it clear that I don't want to jump to conclusions and say this was a scam. But, with no formal explanation they left fans to piece together things by themselves.

Edited: A backer confirmed to me that money for the larger prizes was definitely returned to her and some of her friends. This still does not excuse the mysterious silence surrounding the situation as I had to actually do quite a bit of research to find people whereas the band making it clear would have solved his whole issue.

But, even if they didn't pocket the money and it was somehow given back after all of the confusion, here's the issue that many fans can't get over. Being in a band at a certain level of success is a job, and if you can't do the job you were paid to do you have to refund the money, make a statement about it or both. As soon as you are making money from a bunch of young impressionable people, you are obligated to give them closure for moments of their life where they thought your music really touched their hearts, and their wallets paid for your lifestyle. If they are mad, they are mad at wasted time and money when you clearly knew that you weren't going to follow through with plans as soon as your new plans prioritized. If the band wrote something clearing it up, even now, fans would be able to look back at their memories with some regard of happiness. But now it all seems like it was a scam and a time wasted over people either who wanted to move on with their lives, or wanted to get famous.

But of course this is not the end. It get's worse. I promised Halsey was a piece of this puzzle, and she is. I don't know how much of a piece but, I have nothing but positivity towards her because I see her career as a separate entity.

In August of 2015, Halsey released an album called Badlands. Prior to this, she had released an EP and I, like many fans from bands she hung out with at the time, decided to give her a listen. She also had a massive following on Tumblr, wrote songs about how much she hated Haylor (Harry Styles and Taylor Swift) and was super relatable. This contributed to a huge success for her in the long run, as we now realize every time we can't get Closer out of heads. Halsey's success has nothing to do with this but, the publicity she has gotten does. To put out a quick disclaimer, I'm not a Halsey hater. I wish her success forever. But, her come up story is twisted in a way that makes Action Item seem like a side project in a quick escalation in her manager Anthony Li's lifestyle which is insanely unreal, untrue and a slap in the face to his fans.

In a 2016 article for Billboard magazine about Halsey's rise to fame, the following paragraph left a sour taste in some Action Item fan's mouths:

"She took the train out to New Jersey and in an hour knocked out the spare, icy single “Ghost.” Li encouraged her to come up with a name and without a lot of consideration, she picked Halsey, both an anagram of Ashley and the name of her boyfriend’s Brooklyn subway stop. They put the song up on iTunes, and something magical happened–stoked by her Internet fan base, the tune shot up the alternative chart overnight. By the following morning, A&R reps from "Republic, Atlantic, Island, RCA–the whole major-label circuit based out of New York"–wanted to talk development deals. Li quit his band and became her manager."

The last line stung. Never had the band pointed out that he quit, let alone that anything like this was happening. At the time in question which had to be before April of 2015 due to Li's presence in Halsey's social media at the time, the band was still releasing music and pretending everything was fine. All of the sudden everyone was doing new things, college, marriage, and Anthony rose to fame quickly with the success of his top performer Halsey.

At first, I was ecstatic about the success, like many fans. When you have physically met someone and had a semi-genuine conversation with them, it feels good to know they're succeeding. It was almost overnight, and it was great for Anthony. It was bittersweet that now the band was going to have to officially announce the breakup, and go back on all of the things they promised. It was just bitter when that still after all of this, did not happen. There was a cry for closure from all around but, it never came. The band stayed silent. Anthony rose to the top of the Forbes 30 Under 30, ironically while people pled for an answer of what happened to the money he had raised with Action Item during 2014. There's been nothing in over two years from this band. We just want it to be said, the band is over, pack up and go home. We don't know if the worst case scenario played out, that Anthony took the money and used it to skyrocket Halsey into the fame she has now, hoping to pay it back later after the record deal.

It's a rumored hypothesis that could be cleared up with a simple message on social media. The silence says "we know what we did but, we don't want to admit to it."

I'm still happy for all the members of a band that I am now hesitant to admit used to be my favorite. I don't keep up with them often. When people are in a band it feels normal to care about what they're doing with their lives but now, it would obviously just seem odd to "fangirl" about their life events the way I did their music. This whole ending of the band may be as much as we get but it taught me a lesson. Musicians are humans that make mistakes and people that you hold to a celebrity standard are just people trying to do what they want in life, too. I don't hold resentment for them moving on but I, like many fans, still want to know where all the money went and if it was given back. The silence on that matter alone is astounding. Taking ten minutes out of a day to write a post saying the band has ended would be great too. As much as I respect that the members of the band are indeed humans with new life goals, we as fans are all humans too. We shared moments of our lives with them, and it's not like we're asking for more than a post on social media to clear things up.

We just want the answer to a question: what ever happened to Action Item and what's going to happen in the future if anything?